THEATRE REVIEW: The Cher Show - The Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield.

Why have one leading lady when you can have three?!..

New musical, 'The Cher Show', tells the story of the evolution of Cherilyn Sarkisian, a shy sixteen-year-old girl from Southern California; an outcast at school, bullied for her looks and struggling with both dyslexia and dyscalculia. Leaving her mother's home at sixteen she went on to seek fame and fortune, and transformed from ugly duckling to the black swan entertainment queen she’s known for today. A fashion icon, a diva, a movie star, gay icon and an award winner. Love her or loath her, Cher is a legend in her own right. Whilst my first thoughts were that it was going to be just “another jukebox musical”, this is certainly no jukebox musical. Nor is it a tribute act. Instead it’s a behind-the-scenes and backstage tour of the iconic moments through Cher's career and climb to international stardom. It’s full of all the highs and lows of a shy 16-year-old girl's rise to fame. 

At first I felt the way the story was told was a bit here, there and everywhere, and couldn’t get my head around the format (book by Rick Elice) - it starts with dancers preparing for Cher to make her entrance but switches to backstage where she’s reluctant to go on stage. We meet three Chers all backstage who regularly talk to each other - there’s “Babe” - the younger Cher from the earlier stages of her career, to “Lady” at the height of her career and “Star” who made an epic comeback in the late 1990s. The story then rewinds back to 1962 when we meet a young Cher aka Babe (Millie O’Connell) who comes home from school crying to Mum Georgia (Tori Scott). Fed up of struggling at school and not fitting in with her peers, she decides to quit school and move to Los Angeles where she meets performer Sonny Bono (Lucas Rush) and the pair strike up a relationship and soon are performing as duo Sonny and Cher.  Later we meet “Lady” (Danielle Steers) who takes us through a lot of the memories I personally have of Cher as I was growing up, and “Star” (Debbie Kurup) showing the icons late '90's comeback.

The stage backdrop set is floor-to-ceiling rails of garments in covers and two floor-to-ceiling metal shelf units on either side of the stage, full of mannequin heads each one wearing one of the many iconic wigs over her long-spanning career. And whilst we get several solos from each of the three Chers, we also get them singing together a lot, which for me works really well, along with back-up singers and dancers the story soon got in full flow. The audience is taken through all the important moments of the highs and lows of Chers career and personal life, and for each different scene where the year changes, the year was cleverly either displayed in big wooden letters on such as the back of a piano or on a wooden gypsy caravan or in lights. Each Cher (Babe/Lady/Star) would be on stage for the majority of the musical timeline, either as backup vocals or on lead vocals depending on what decade the current scene was set in. Each Cher vocally sounded so close to the real queen herself whilst bringing something different to their performances. I loved Millie O’Connell’s portrayal as sixtie's Cher and loved the pairing with Lucas Rush as Sonny having watched so many different recordings of the real life duo perform “I Got You Babe”, I have to say that their performance tonight really made it seem like I was seeing the real life duo in the flesh.  Speaking of being true to the original, I have to say one Cher in particular absolutely blew me away with their convincing portrayal as Cher - Danielle Steers not only looked so much like Cher but she was by far ,in my opinion, the most sound-a-like performer. I could easily just watch Steers do a full length concert dressed as Cher and it would feel like the real deal. But also both O’Connell and Kurup were so so convincing and so close to the real deal, it’s this trio's casting, along with Rush as Sonny that made this show so magical. Throw in slick choreography by Strictly Come Dancings Oti Mabuse and direction by Arlene Phillips, this glitter and sequinned gem of musical has real potential to be a West End sell out, it just feels like it’s lacking something at the moment but I couldn’t put my finger on what that something is. I just felt in places it was rushed and skipped from one year to the next with just snippets of a hit song belted out and not always giving us the full song. Also none of the songs are in order to what year they came out (so a song not released until years later would be used in a snippet of the storyline decades before the song release). But maybe that’s just me struggling to see where the story was going when it first started and not understanding the format, either way it certainly hasn’t put me off wanting to see it again. 

For me the musical is the perfect refreshing new show I’d been itching for for so long, it just feels so fresh and different to anything else I’ve seen recently and left me craving more of the vocals of Kurup/Steers/O’Connell. Steers was a knockout sensation who stole the entire show for me and that alone is reason enough to go see the tour over and over again.  Add to the mix some stunning costumes from Gabriella Slade and one could be convinced that indeed they could turn back time and be transported to Cher's heyday. But I feel that it just wasn’t quite “big” enough - whilst the mostly black costumes were often scantily clad ones as made famous by Cher, and full of sequins, they often lacked the over the top flamboyance that came with so many of the concert costumes. But whilst I feel there’s ample room for improvement, I still felt blown away at last night's opening night in Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre - but this was mostly because of Steers' uncanny vocal performance. A must-see for any true diva.

Reviewer - Lottie Davis-Browne
on - 10.5.22