“The Cher Show,” however, makes excellent emotional sense of the three versions of its heroine: Star, the self-possessed Cher of the past several decades; Lady, the glossy-haired Cher of the 1970s; and the dreamily awkward Babe, who is only 16 when she falls for Sonny. Cher, we learn, has been wounded by being a punch line, and these iterations of her aren’t sendups. True, “The Cher Show” skips over the disastrous reception to Altman’s production, but that’s not what the scene about the play represents anyway. So is the depiction of Sonny and Cher’s transgender child, Chaz, whom we glimpse as an infant swaddled in a blue-and-white baby blanket. Blend them together and you’ll get one sort of like Cher.

Source: New York Times December 19, 2018 10:52 UTC