Cher turns back time with a sensational show
Review
Cher
O2 Arena, London
★★★★★
‘What is your granny doing tonight?” Cher teasingly inquired at the start of an extravagantly entertaining show. I think it is fair to say that unless you are a direct descendant of the 73-year-old American superstar, your elderly relatives are unlikely to have been up to anything like this.
Backed by a slick seven-piece band and 10 dancers, Cher paraded around in skimpy clothing and ludicrous wigs, sang duets with her dead ex-husband, rode an animatronic elephant, cavorted with muscular gladiators and spanked lithe burlesque dancers, gossiped about life in Hollywood, and belted out a succession of crowdpleasing hits, all choreographed with a flamboyancy that could make Strictly
Come Dancing look shy and retiring. Cherilyn Sarkisian has been a mononymous star since the midsixties, although it would be hard to define what has made her so enduring.
“I’ve never really been accepted by singers as a singer, and actors don’t think of me as an actor,” she breezily complained over a video montage of her multi-million-selling musical triumphs and award-winning film roles.
For a showbusiness stalwart, Cher maintains a potent sense of being a maverick outsider. Once part of a goofy duo with first husband, Sonny Bono, Cher transformed into a very singular figure since going solo in the Seventies. Her late partner appeared on the big screen, duetting in the 1965 smash I Got You Babe, his nasal chipmunk vocals still serving to emphasise the strange potency of Cher’s low, thick, vibrant contralto. Black-and-white images of the young Cher suggested that she has had her teeth fixed since her breakthrough, and pretty much everything else too.
“Do you like my beautiful blue hair?” she asked, running her fingers through something resembling a luminous alien perched on top of her head. “It’s entirely natural.”
Before Debbie Harry and Madonna, Cher was negotiating the maledominated music business by creating a persona of femininity so exaggerated it is effectively camp, with a semisatirical edge that implies real power beneath the powder.
“Everyone claps when I say my age and I wonder if it’s coz I’m still alive or coz I can still get into my costumes?” she faux-innocently asked. “A bit of both, and a lot more besides” would be my answer.
One of her signature tunes is If I Could Turn Back Time, and when she appeared wearing the sheer lingerie and curly wig from her 1989 video, the roar of delight was deafening. Cher was 43 when that single put her back on top, and already striking blows for older women in showbusiness.
Whether it is yoga, surgery, make-up or lighting, she is unapologetic about using all means at her disposal to maintain her glamorous edge. Nor are her voice and song selection the least of it: she belts out hits with a force that suggests whatever else has been replaced, it hasn’t been her lungs.