The Cher Show traveling musical is now in its second year around the U.S. The closest it has come to me has been Phoenix (or maybe Denver). And those cities are a 7-hour drive in either direction, far from really “close.” And this is not the kind of show I would travel farther than Kansas City to see.  The first incarnation of the traveling show was set to come to our Popejoy Hall on the beautiful campus of the University of New Mexico here in Albuquerque where I have seen many other traveling once-Broadway shows.

But that whole enterprise was cancelled before it began due to COVID. The reboot show has not returned to Albuquerque for some reason. We get plenty of pop and rock shows finding there way to us as a second or third-tier market. Since I’ve been here I’ve seen Elton John (solo, bucket list) at Tingley Coliseum at the city fairgrounds (where my parents once saw Johnny Cash in the 1970s and where Sonny & Cher came to play), Bob Dylan at the Kimo Theater, Sammy Hagar and Don Williams at the surrounding casinos (Route66 and Isleta respectively). I have yet to visit our local amphitheater although I came close to seeing Elvis Costello on tour with Steely Dan there (I had seen Steely Dan already at the Riverport amphitheater, now Hollywood Casino amphitheater in St. Louis).

All to say I’m hoping The Cher Show comes to Popejoy in year three.

But I do have a few friends and relatives in Phoenix and one of them is journalist Robrt Pela, who you may know from previous Cher Scholar conversations and interviews. I decided to head out in that direction for the 28 March 2025 show at The Mesa Arts Center. I really wanted to see it again because the first time was mostly a Broadway blur.

While I was in Cleveland a few months ago moving my parents, Robrt and I did a Phoenix Magazine conversation about the show and then the day before the show we did another brief conversation at the KJZZ studio for NPR. It was the first radio station I’d ever been in and it looked just like any other office space. Later that weekend when I was talking about the experience to my cousin, she asked me what I was expecting and I said WKRP.

Unlike the 2022-23 British version of the tour last year (which had unique costumes, sets and assets), this show appears to be a simplified replica of the Broadway show.

We have a new cast and I’m now noticing the interesting combinations of characters played by single actors. These are the major parts:

  • 1980s Cher, a.k.a. the Star (sometimes called Icon or Badass) played by Morgan Scott in her second year
  • 1970s Cher, a.k.a. the Lady (sometimes called the glam pop star or the Smartass) played by Catherine Ariale in her second year
  • 1960s Cher, a.k.a. the Babe (sometimes called the Kid or the Sweetheart) played by Ella Perez in her second year
  • Sonny played by Lorenzo Pugliese (who played Joe Pesci in a show of Jersey Boys similar to Jarrod Spector who also played Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys on Broadway, which is telling about the crossover of the Sonny role to the Italians in Jersey Boys)
  • Georgia Holt/Lucille Ball played by Kristin Rose Kelleher (the press sheet for this show listed actress Lucy Werner, as does the Wikipedia page) so were we seeing a new, unlisted understudy or has Werner left?)
  • Bob Mackie/Robert Altman/Frank played by Tyler Pirrung
  • Gregg Allman/John Southall played by Zack Zaromatidis (which kind of turns Gregg Allman into a southern-style father figure here, which is not really what he was for Cher)
  • Robert Camilletti played by Brooks Andrew
  • Phil Spector/Sid the Censor/Male ET Reporter played by Kevin Michael Buckley (kind of a subset of villains)
  • Infomercial Director/Digby the Writer played by Mark Tran Russ (another set up even larger villains…these two get a big amount of shade in this musical and, by the way, Digby Wolfe was the head writer on Cher in 1975)

(click to enlarge)

I like to crowd-watch these things. Most of the audience was comprised of older couples and groups of women. This might because younger people don’t go to these shows. There was one young, gay couple ahead of us who seemed very into it, as did the groups of women around me.

There were a lot of gray-heads, including mine. But talking to my group, we thought we might have skewed younger than most of the crowd.  One blonde woman in the row ahead talked about having bought a Cher doll.

I took notes this time at the risk of looking weird. Which is something I wasn’t willing to do at the Neil Simon Theater on Broadway.

The show started with an audio cacophony of Cher from interviews and other clips. A pack of sailors enters with the 80s-Cher dressed in the Hole fit. This was a hippier, more full-figured Cher. And I like these variations. She was less of a powerhouse of a singing voice than the other two but my group all agreed she had the best talking voice. I don’t see why the “Cher voice” is necessary but people seem to like to understand Cher as this drawling creature (they, likewise, make Sonny cartoonishly nasally) when normal people using normal voices would probably do. My group noted that this show is very old Broadway and I agree that the characters were all broadly played. “Cher puts the Broad in Broadway”…okay I’ll stop now.

One thing this musical does is that it embellishes. This Cher’s holefit had wings. Which is a fiction. Which reminds us, this isn’t a documentary. It’s part fiction. It has embellishments and conflations. Cher never wore wings with her holefits. The holefit was enough.

Likewise, the 60s Cher also was not known for bare midriffs. She showed much less skin in the 1960s. But the archetypical Cher outfit for 60s Cher is a halter top. So 70s Cher is dressed too conservatively and 60s Cher too scantily.

One of the things Robrt Pela and I talk about in the interview is a survey of fans and non-fans I did years ago that amounted to people saying Cher was resilient and strong (as a single impression). The musical underscores how this is only part of the story and really focuses on Cher’s fear and the overcoming of fear. This time I noted all the ways it does this. Cher, according to both this musical and her memoir, never feels naturally, organically strong and fearless. The 60s Cher is especially shy and tentative. Which means, this is something we project on to her as an audience. We see the results not her struggle to get there.

During the scene where Georgia and John Southall, Cher’s step-dad, (as opposed to John Sarkisian, her biological dad), take little Cher to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Georgia tells Cher, “life can be scary.” There’s another line about fear, “the real you is terrified.” Another line: “See what happens when you high-kick fear in the butt?” And “being shit scared and facing it anyway.”

One of the effects of seeing a Broadway show is shock and awe, usually from the huge stage sets. My first Broadway show was Sunset Boulevard. And I remember thinking, this set is bigger than my Yonkers apartment! The traveling show has traveling sets which are quite a bit smaller and scaled down. The show relies a lot on projected images and a few, representative pieces, like a dressing table to signify Cher’s childhood house. But thankfully there is still a plethora of wigs, costumes and love beads.

And I found it interesting to watch the show after reading Cher’s 2024 memoir. Because not only do we know the story better now, we get more detail in the book. All the broad strokes are fleshed out. Which makes the show seem super-simplistic. Plus the events are not new to readers anymore. But this show is still a good option for those who don’t read celebrity memoirs.

When Georgia tells the kid Cher (technically is this the fourth Cher?) “you may not be the prettiest, smartest most talented,” I heard the crowd in front audibly laugh/groan. Cher has said this quote from her mother for decades. As time goes by, it has less punch. (The crowd did not agree. I do not agree. Howard Stern did not agree). Contrast this to the very similar Silkwood story about the audience laughing when Cher’s name came up during the previews. We feel great sympathy for Cher but we find that event believable. She was undervalued. It’s the flipside of the Georgia Holt story. Holt is talking to a pre-swanned Cher. There’s dramatic irony going on there added to the fact most of Cher’s fans find Cher prettier than Cher finds herself.

When Cher meets Sonny, she is intimidated and embarrasses herself with some inane small talk, “I’m a taurus” and Sonny responds disdainfully, “I’m a Bono.” This dialogue isn’t in the memoir. The musical also claims Sonny is 28 when they meet instead of 27. The musical also has Cher saying, “I like to run through fields of flowers” which if you’ve seen Good Times…

Our party commented that seeing the characters Bridget and Coleen felt like an Easter-egg and at one point one of them tells Sonny that Cher is “someone who will make you feel ten feet tall.” (This is a very concise, telling and bittersweet line.)

The show conflates Cher’s first two meetings of Phil Spector. According to the memoir, she didn’t actually meet him with Sonny. She had met him before with previous boyfriend, Red. This is where they had the famous French exchange which is not depicted here. (Spector: “Coulez vous coucher avec moi?”  Cher’s sassy response: “Pour de l’argent.”)

The Spector sessions scene has a great line though, maybe from Sonny: “Like Columbus, the world before Cher was flat.”

The audience engaging in spontaneous clapping gave me cognitive dissonance, to be honest. I’ve been one of a marginalized fan group for so many decades, I initially wonder how non-Cher fans even know these famous tags and triggers? Like S&C coming out to sing “I Got You Babe” (in those furry Sonny boots and there was a story about those in the memoir), or some semi-famous Cher quip, (the line, “I am a rich man”). And then I realize, oh yeah…hundreds of people have now come to a roadshow musical because they actually like Cher (or were dragged here by someone who does…being a Barry Manilow fan didn’t teach me nothin’). Cher’s F.U. Oscar dress eliciting big applause is another example.

The scenes in 60s England were represented with four TV monitors (depicting the flurry of their appearances there) and Union Jacks. Sonny & Cher wear retro-I-Got-You-Babe outfits. Or rather, our shorthanded idea of them, but not exactly it. Similar to Bob Mackie’s recreations for Cher’s “All I Really Want to Do/The Beat Goes On” moments in live shows.

The musical calls them “the world’s first hippies.” Were they though? Possibly. They did fall in between activities of the Beats and the psychedelic bands.

One of the anachronistic things about this musical is the scrambling up of the musical timeline.” When the Money’s Gone” plays with Sonny (so we can re-read this song as Cher’s challenge to Sonny’s love: would he love her without the money she earns for him; and we are left with doubts on this point). My normal distaste for images used in the wrong decade is suspended when song order is scrambled on purpose to raise questions or when lyrics are rewritten for the dramatic situation.

To break it down: we start, of course, with “Turn Back Time” because this is what storytelling is doing. The UK show also included “Believe” in the intro part of the show.

Songs signifying childhood include:

  • Half Breed (Cher is part Armenian and looking dramatically different than her mother and sister)
  • A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes (from Disney’s Cinderella)  (not in the official cast recording)
  • You Better Sit Down Kids (which was changed to “You Better Sit Down Kid” in the UK and traveling US programs and does not get included on the cast recording)
  • Half Breed is then reprised (in the traveling UK and US shows)

Meeting Sonny and Phil Spector-era songs include:

  • Da Do Ron Ron (The Crystals) (not in the cast recording)
  • Be My Baby (The Ronettes) (not in the cast recording)
  • The Shoop Shoop Song (signifying the 60s)
  • I Like It Like That (a Dave Clark Five song in the US/Broadway show that took up valuable real estate for little gain, we thought, and was non included in the UK version or on the cast recording)

Career with Sonny songs include:

  • I Got You Babe
  • Little Man (not in the cast recording)
  • When The Money’s Gone
  • All or Nothing (Not listed in the Phoenix program but I vaguely remember it)
  • Vamp (not in the cast recording)
  • Aint Nobody’s Business If I Do (the Mackie parade)
  • Bang Bang (only in UK and traveling US show)
  • Living in  House Divided (a rare treat)
  • Bang Bang (Reprise for UK and traveling US shows)
  • Believe (Ballad)
  • All I Ever Need Is You (UK position only, the song is moved to Act II for the US shows)
  • Song for the Lonely (interesting end for the Sonny-era)

Solo/Gregg Allman Era songs include:

  • All I Ever Need Is You (US shows only)
  • Heart of Stone (US shows only)
  • Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves
  • Midnight Rider (Gregg Allman)
  • Ramblin’ Man (The Allman Brothers Band) (US shows only)
  • Just Like Jesse James
  • Believe (UK only)
  • Dark Lady
  • Baby Don’t Go (Sonny’s departure) (not in the cast recording)

Post Husbands/Movie Era songs include:

  • Strong Enough
  • When the Money’s Gone (not in the cast recording)
  • The Way of Love (as an acting performance)’
  • The Beat Goes On (movie montage)
  • It Don’t Come Easy (Phoenix show program) (the Ringo Starr song? I don’t remember this)
  • D’ove L’amore (UK only)
  • I Found Someone (video with Robert Camilletti)

Last songs include:

  • A Different Kind of Love Song  (UK only)
  • Heart of Stone (UK position only)
  • We All Sleep Alone (UK only, removed August 2022)
  • Song for the Lonely (UK added August 2022)
  • I Got You Babe Reprise (UK and US traveling shows only)
  • You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me (Broadway and UK only)
  • I Hope You Find It (UK shows in my program but not on Wikipedia)
  • A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes Reprise (US shows only according to my UK program but not listed on Wikipedia and also not in the cast recording)

Finale Medley (US traveling show didn’t list the medley they played)

  • Believe
  • Strong Enough
  • Woman’s World
  • You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me (Broadway only)
  • D’ove L’amore (UK only)
  • Shoop Shoop Song (UK only)
  • I Found Someone (UK only)
  • Believe Again (UK only)
  • Take Me Home (Curtain Call, US only)

So you can see how the songs were used out of order to further the plot. This makes the show a new thing and not just a kind of Review of her existing songs. You can’t sing along to this.  Songs are put into dramatic medleys and used as segues.

I did not know this until Robrt told me but “When the Money’s Gone” is a cover of Bruce Roberts (1995). A nice, sweet version with juicy alternative lines like “Shred the credit cards/just like Watergate” and “black and white TV. When the weekend comes, we can watch Pee Wee.”)

The scene with the television show seem rough as it’s mostly about Sonny’s slave-driving and temper. The joy of working, depicted in the memoir, is absent from the musical. There are lines about bad writing, too, (which is a bit unfair considering the cultural work the show did for women) and there’s a line from about Cher being dismissed with “it’s all about the clothes anyway” which goes into the James Brown song “It’s a Man’s World” (in my notes but not depicted in any of the show programs). This was probably true but it doesn’t map to the memoir, where the censors were discussed but not so much the struggles to work around bad writing. Besides, some of those writers went on to do big things (Steve Martin, Bob Einstein). The musical is dismissive without details.

The big Bob Mackie number really wowed the Broadway crowd. I checked my program pics to confirm this but this show’s parade of outfits couldn’t be track back to real Cher outfits as easily in the traveling show. The Broadway show had recreations of the real iconic Cher outfits: the Ringmaster, one of her recent live Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves outfits, the D2K opener, Laverne, the Rhinestone Cowboy fit from the solo TV show. There was a male dancer in the Phoenix show in drag wearing the Take-Me-Home-Viking-fit with a bare ass that got a big laugh. Looking back at my Broadway program, it was a male dancer in the Half-Breed outfit for that show. So, similar to the UK show, the costumes have been reworked and made “in the style” of Cher, aside from one or two emblematic efforts (like the “I Got You Babe” outfits and the “Take Me Home” one).

The woman next to me would grunt whenever Sonny said something sexist or mean, like she was feeling it viscerally. In fact, there was applauding when Sonny was finally shuffled out of Cher’s life. That seemed harsh, even though Sonny was harsh himself. Sonny was played so broadly, as we’ve said, his scary lines seemed super-scary. And Sonny did have his scary moments but they were conflated here with his controlling moments. For example, he slammed a wall in their 60s kitchen, not a glass mirror in their 70s dressing room (according to the memoir).

The Gregg Allman part never ceases to feel very kitschy. I mean, Gregg Allman…as a character…in a big, broad musical? Singing Cher songs? A Gregg Allman impersonator? It’s just so wonderfully weird. He sings pieces of “Midnight Rider” and “Ramblin’ Man” which reminds me of a meme my friend Coolia just sent me (unrelated):

Sonny and Gregg Allman expressing their discomfort in stepping over each other in Cher’s life during the late 1970s via the song “Dark Lady” and Cher’s duet with Allman on “Just Like Jesse James” are strangely satisfying for the audience.

They mistakenly call the post-solo, reboot of the Sonny & Cher Show, the Comedy Hour and the show wasn’t cancelled after a half a season as the musical states, more like two half seasons and 34 episodes.

In the Robert Altman (discovering Cher as an actress) scene, the audience laughed at Cher’s casual Popeye comment and in this case the musical elaborated farther than the memoir did, having Cher qualify her critique: “It was just so dark.”

There was another line in the musical about there being basically two emotions, fear and love and love is the better side of it because it’s full of vulnerability. (Which is very astute.)

The infomercial filming seemed revealingly harsh, the depiction of the director. That didn’t seem pleasant.

And even though they cheered when he exited, we all got teary when Sonny came back as a ghost. Cher still needed to talk to him.

The Assets

This show has no swag. I tried to remember the traveling shows of my youth and can’t remember swag at the outdoor Muny theater in St. Louis either after Show Boat. But then, I wouldn’t have gone looking for it.

On my ticket, this introduction was printed: “Superstars come and go. Cher is forever. For six straight decades, only one unstoppable force that has flat-out dominated popular culture – breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries and letting nothing and no one stand in her way.” [Ok that sentence is a bit much. Things did, in fact, stand in her way quite often], the kid, the glam pop star and the icon. 35 smash hits, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, Oscar, Emmy…enough…Bob Mackie gowns to create a sequin shortage in New York City, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audience dancing in the aisles!”

Well, in Phoenix they weren’t.

While we were all talking about how we became Cher fans, I told the story of starting out as a Sonny & Cher fan, how I loved their charisma, their glamour (another visiting cousin confided to me last weekend she had a crush on Sonny), their glamour and how they were never boring. How Cher has carried on that tradition and how I can now enjoy being a fan through scholarly digs and also the same childhood delight.

Impersonators can’t recreate that. The impersonation gets in the way.

Robrt and I also talked about how this show is about anxiety and fear as much as resilience. About the great wall of fear. And how Cher’s impact and legacy may still be evolving in these very times of political fear. We’re gonna need these lessons in overcoming anxiety. This is a time when the powers in place want to put women and minority groups back in our place (their words). And therefore, this musical takes on a practical value, being as much about vulnerability as it is about heroics. We see Cher doing this work of encouraging us during her Hall of Fame speech last October: “don’t give up, you belong here.”

At least, it affects me that way personally.

This musical is one of the lucky things we have now that provide meaning for the last seven decades of Cher: music, a musical, a memoir, dolls, perfumes, a skin care line, a Vegas poker machine, cookbooks, maybe someday a movie, a video game, a board game, who knows.