Live: Cher at Caesars Palace
POP MUSIC REVIEW
She might be 62, but the singer is still full of her trademark glitz and glamour. Her show is lavish, nonstop fun.
LAS VEGAS -- Like the temples of the ancient Roman world that it simulates, the Colosseum at Caesars Palace is an environment suited to extravagant immortals. The artists who've graced its huge stage have all achieved that status in which one name not only serves but also explains and expands upon whatever the star projects.
First there was Celine, clean and lean, selling every song with unmatchable melodrama. Then came Elton, whose eloquence (if not always elegance) weighs a ton. Later, there was Bette, and you can bet on her -- she's the go-to girl for solid showbiz flair.
Tuesday night, the ultimate Colosseum dweller arrived. Cher -- the cherished icon of pop reinvention, beloved by freaks and squares, gay liberationists and straight soccer moms, Netflix-renting couch potatoes and rump-shaking disco denizens -- used every possible corner of the stage (as well as several huge screens and the walls) to present a signature performance based upon her larger-than-life story, a mythology of self-reinvention in which we can all . . . oh, you get the idea.
Cher's occupation of the Colosseum, where she will play 200 shows over the next three years (rotating with the aforementioned Bette Midler and Elton John), is the most appropriate thing to happen to Las Vegas since rumors started flying that rock 'n' roll magician Criss Angel was dating former Playboy Playmate Pamela Anderson.
Like Vegas itself, the 62-year-old queen of over-the-top pizazz bridges several eras of entertainment. Since the 1960s, when she and her former husband, the late Sonny Bono, transformed from would-be folkies into mainstream translators of the counterculture, this singer-actress-fashion extremist has crossed a surprising number or musical boundaries.
She found new commercial appeal in classic pop forms, such as women's blues and burlesque, by linking them to hippie rock, pop rock and disco; though her mega-hits aren't that numerous, she's managed to make a commercial mark in every decade. What grounds her many incarnations is a sexy unpretentiousness that's straight out of the Mae West handbook.
Lavish costumes and sets
"I'm old, but I'm tough," she said after floating from the rafters to the stage on a sparkling contraption she called "the Flying Wallenda Evel Knievel Deathmobile," wearing a huge feathered headdress and singing U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The elaborate entrance established that this Cher show would be bigger and better than the others; the endearingly rambling monologue that followed assured fans that this was still the same old Cher.
