Cher's spectacle
Review by Martin Jones
February 28, 2005
From:


Spectacle ... Cher belts out the tunes in Melbourne.
http://www.entertainment.news.com.au/story/0,10221,12394727-7484,00.html
I'M not qualified to comment on Cher's choice of costumes (and the drag-loving diva spent at least as much time changing into them as she did displaying them), but many of her musical choices for this, the first of her Australian farewell shows, were downright disappointing.
Why, for example, open a farewell tour with U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - surely if you still hadn't found it, you'd keep looking instead of bowing out?
Of course, Cher's finale was always going to be more of a spectacle than, well, whatever the aural equivalent of a spectacle is. After the Village People got everyone up and dancing to YMCA, video screens reeled past Cher television footage and album covers. The screens periodically blared an exhaustive education in Cher's career, entertaining us, along with Cirque du Soleil-style acrobats/dancers, during the costume changes.
When actually on stage, Cher looked breathtakingly glamorous and eerily well preserved. Descending from the ceiling in a giant chandelier, she stripped off a white fur number to reveal herself wearing little more than strategically placed rhinestones.
Unfortunately, Cher left the video footage to speak for her for the most part, being too busy elevating through trapdoors, riding in mechanical elephants and wriggling into the next outrageous costume.
Musical highlights were a medley of Cher's earliest hits, All I Want To Do, Half Breed and Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss) and the double whammy of Strong Enough and If I Could Turn Back Time featuring a slightly more modest version of that outfit.
For the encore, Believe, Cher descended from above again, this time in something like a mirror-tiled toilet bowl, wearing a silver jump suit and red hair with acrobats twirling from silver hoops and silver streamers and confetti ejaculating over the audience. Phew!
So farewell, Cher! You can add one more achievement to your considerable CV; tonight you proved that a pop concert need not rely on music to be effective.