Splitting Chers
Star’s dividing her time between ‘Mamma Mia! 2’ & her B’way show
‘THE Cher Show” is rehearsing here in New York at the New 42nd Street Studios, but somebody key to the entire enterprise is missing: Cher.
She can’t be here because she’s in London and Croatia f ilming the sequel to “Mamma Mia!” Cher recently tweeted that she joined the cast but didn’t say what part she’s playing.
Well, here’s the exclusive: She’s playing Meryl
Streep’s mother. That may seem odd, since Meryl’s 68 and Cher is 71, but Cher plays Meryl’s character’s mother in flashbacks from the ’60s.
Cher will be a dancing queen from before “Dancing Queen” was ever written.
I’m told everybody on “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” is having a great time in London and Croatia, which are standing in for Greece this time because it’s cheaper to shoot there.
Judy Craymer, who produced the original “Mamma Mia!” onstage and the 2008 movie, is overseeing the production. Croatia is a bit short of Four Seasons Hotels, but Craymer solved the problem by Airbnb-ing much of the cast and crew. Croatia is also lacking in Jean-Georges restaurants, so production meetings after shoots are being held in funky Croatian bars.
“It’s a bit like doing a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe,” says a source about a movie that’s costing something like $100 million.
The chemistry between Streep and Cher, I’m told, is terrific, and they’re enjoying acting together again for the first time since 1983’s “Silkwood.”
Cher’s headed back to New York at the end of the month, when the producers are having a “presentation,” as they call it, of “The Cher Show” for an audience of one: Cher.
Then it’s off to Chicago in June for the out-of-town tryout.
“The Cher Show,” by the way, isn’t the working title. It’s what it will be called when it opens on Broadway in the fall of 2018.
Writer Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys”) says, “Whatever title I came up with, people will still say, ‘What do you hear about the Cher show?’ ‘Have you seen the Cher show?’ ‘Are you going to see the Cher show?’ ”
He decided: “I might as well call it ‘The Cher Show.’ ”
By all accounts, it’s going gangbusters in rehearsals.
This is a bio show, with three different actresses playing Cher at various stages of her life. The mu- sical traces her hardscrabble upbringing, her rise to stardom (with Sonny Bono) in the ’60s and ’70s, her depression after she and Sonny split, and her subsequent reinvention as a pop icon and movie star.
Jason Moore (“Avenue Q”) is directing, and
Chris Gattelli is choreographing.
I’d kill to be at that “presentation.” I just might put on a long black wig, a floppy hat and a pair of big sunglasses to slip by security.
If anybody asks who I am, I’ll say, “Meryl Streep.”
YOU read it here first: “Springsteen on Broadway” will extend its run past February, possibly even till June. Bruce Springsteen is having the time of his life, and the show is sensational, even for someone like myself who’s more partial to Engelbert Humperdinck than the Boss.
As for a Special Tony Award: It’s in the bag.
As one Tony official says, “Do you think we’re idiots?”