Block said, plainly, she was “scared shitless” by the Cher classics the role required. We’ve gone through quite a long journey with this show, and we’ve been tested already quite a bit.”Įight shows a week is one of those tests, but The Cher Show comes with an added challenge, and a fourth main character entirely: the costumes, designed and re-created by Cher’s longtime fashion partner in crime, Bob Mackie, for the show. I think when the three of us came together there was this beautiful understanding, there was this respect of each piece of Cher, of each other. “That was part of the occasion to make this show work: find three women-three actors, three humans-that could lovingly share this role and make sure that we kind of all had a communal agenda. “The bonding that had to take place backstage, to me, was equally as important as whatever we brought onstage, sharing space and sharing lines and whatnot,” Block said. “We can’t get to the happy ending already because big momma bear is coming into the scene and saving the day.” So, Block’s Cher, who interacts with Lady and Babe throughout the show, comes in with a comforting word or two, but like Cher herself might do, encourages the young ones to buck up and figure it out. “Our director, Jason Moore, would say to me, ‘Stephanie, you’re being too comforting, and the audience is going to know that this is going to turn out O.K.,’” she said. It requires a motherly energy that Block said came naturally to her, and that she had to tone down throughout rehearsals.
As the older, wiser maternal Cher, she guides her two younger selves through the show, which takes the audience from the moment 7-year-old Cher was bullied by other kids for being a “half-breed” to her most recent farewell tour. When Block’s Star first emerges on the stage, she is wearing the revealing black leather outfit from the “If I Could Turn Back Time” video-the Cher who has seen and done pretty much all there is to do in the music industry, and watched her career rise and fall along the way. Block, who plays the current Cher, “Star,” who literally turns back time to advise two younger versions of the character: “Lady,” the Cher who broke out on her own post–Sonny Bono, played by 36-year-old Teal Wicks, and “Babe,” the young, long-haired hippie launched to fame as a teenager, played by the 19-year-old Micaela Diamond. But if there is another, it is Stephanie J. There is but one matriarch of Broadway’s The Cher Show, and that is Cher, who has been a supportive force throughout the creation of her story on the Great White Way.
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