Cher show ablaze with big sights, big sounds

By GINA VIVINETTO

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 27, 1999

TAMPA -- Memo to Cher: If it's true, what they say about you, that at the end of time only Cher and the cockroaches will survive, then please bring your opening act, Cyndi Lauper.

That girl knows how to have fun.

Not that your Friday night performance in front of a sold-out Ice Palace crowd of 15,000 wasn't spectacular. The elaborate black and gold stage set was right out of a Vegas floor show. Its rising platform, the catwalk and the grand, sweeping staircases were regal. Your six dancers, the trapeze artists, all of it was a visual feast.

As were your many costume changes.

Though describing your get-ups would stump even the best fashion pundit. There was the opening number with the Eskimo dress and the hairpiece with gigantic red plumes. It looked as if it were lifted from backstage at Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock.

Later, the Napoleon outfit with the trench coat and hat. The sleek Louise Brooks wig. The beaded sheath gown. The silver parachute pants and top with the chrome-colored wig that made you look like a space-age Edgar Winter. And, finally, that cool magenta Believe wig we've all come to love.

And love you they did. Your cult of Cher. They cheered while the video screen played snippets of The Sonny & Cher Show -- while we waited for you to change. They cheered again while it showed us a montage (with sound) of all your movies -- Mask, Suspect, Silkwood. Moonstruck. The Witches of Eastwick. There's a bunch of them, isn't there? We know; we watched them all while you changed. In fact, we spent so long killing time while you changed, some of us began glancing at our watches like bored husbands in a department store.

But we knew you loved us. Though you didn't talk much. There was that one quip, "I'm older now. I've tamed way down in my dressing." You just can't buy that kind of audience-performer interaction. Or, maybe for $50 to $75 a seat, you can.

Still, it didn't seem as if you had any fun. As if you were going through the motions. And even though you gave us the occasional Vegas point-and-smile, and you did that thing with your thumb, index finger and pinkie -- that "I Love You" gesture -- several times, I just didn't feel the love.

But, your voice sounded great. Fans were thrilled to hear you do U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and your own hits If I Could Turn Back Time and I Found Someone. Everybody loved the soulful they-picked-on-me-when-I-was-little medley of Half-breed, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves and Dark Lady. And, of course, the Palace practically shook when you did Believe, your most recent and biggest hit. (But no The Beat Goes On. Or I Got You Babe. Not without Sonny.)

And though your show was staged and choreographed to the tiniest detail, your charm still came through. Even if it was just the famous Cher mannerisms -- your hair tosses, your licking your lips, your swaggering across stage.

The only person who radiated more charm than you on Friday night was Cyndi Lauper.

In her red Chinese mandarin dress and blue hair, she sang as if she adored performing. Lauper ran around the crowd, danced with fans, and jumped in a piggyback atop her bassist. She stopped the show with the misfit anthem True Colors, which sounds a lot better live than it does in that Kodak commercial.

Lauper radiated downtown New York spunk when she returned for her encore, squawking, "I had to spritz myself off." She finished with a reggae version of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, proving in live shows, spontaneity is sometimes the best strategy.