In Beverly, it takes a village to tell Cher’s story

By Rich Fahey

BEVERLY – You know you’ve really made it as an entertainer when you say only one name and everybody knows who you are.

Elvis. Sting. Bono. Frank. Liza and, probably, mom Judy. And, of course, Cher, born Cheryl Sarskisian on May 20, 1946 in El Centro, Cal., even though she grew up thinking it was Cherilyn.

But it wasn’t always that way. The female half of the pop duo Sonny and Cher endured a countless number of bumps and bruises along the way to becoming an icon.

It’s all there in the North Shore Music Theatre’s “The Cher Show,” a spectacular, entertaining jukebox musical, an extravaganza of song, dance and eye-popping costumes backed by a solid story. It’s so big that it takes three different actresses to portray the entertainment icon at different stages of her life.

 Madeline Hodelson is Babe, the youngest of the trio, with Charissa Hogeland as Lady and Sara Gettelfinger as Star, the iconic older solo version, who is given the heaviest lifting and is there at important moments. But they are all truly interchangeable, and quite often, they are all onstage at the same time; they advise and argue and support each other, and sometimes sing superbly together in super-charged production numbers.

Gettelfinger in particular shines as the older, wiser Cher who has the scars from her battles with Sonny, going flat broke several times, and being let go by record labels and fired from TV shows.

The excellent book by Rick Elice (Tony winner for “Jersey Boys”) touches on virtually every aspect of Cher’s life, from a childhood with single mother Georgia Holt (Angie Schworer) to her ultimate comeback as a solo act selling out arenas.

Sonny Bono is winningly played by Frankie Marasa 5th, and there is strong support from Brenton Cosier as hard -living rocker Gregg Allman, Cher’s second husband, and Schworer again as another iconic entertainer, Lucille Ball.

Be prepared to ooh and ahh at the parade of Cher costumes originally designed by the iconic Bob Mackie, played in the show by Dan Fenaughty. Mackie designed hundreds of costumes on the way to winning a Tony for the Broadway production, with Cher one of the producers. Rebecca Glick coordinates the costumes for this production.

And the other production values are just as sublime. There are 39 separate musical numbers listed in the program, so there’s a good chance that if Cher sang it somewhere in her six decades of entertaining it’s included here, including “Half Breed,” “I Got You Babe,” “Bang Bang,” “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” “All I Ever Need is You,” and “The Way of Love,” to name just a few. Kudos to Milton Granger, a frequent music director at NSMT, and the 12-piece orchestra.

You can’t say enough about Sara Andreas’s spectacular choreography and the talented ensemble and their skimpy, sleek, and form-fitting costumes.

Jack Mehler’s lighting and scenic design transform Beverly into Las Vegas, Adam Berg’s sound design excellently balances words and music, and Rachel Padula-Shufelt deftly manages the wigs and hair designs.

Director Kevin P. Hill is the ringmaster of what amounts to a three-ring theatrical circus, with so many production numbers and a dizzying amount of costume changes, and all parts meld beautifully.

It takes a village of actors, designers, musicians and technicians to tell the story of Cher, and NSMT has been able to assemble them all under one roof, a roof that’s raised many times during “The Cher Show.”

The North Shore Music Theatre production of “The Cher Show.” Book by Rick Elice. Directed by Kevin Hill. At the North Shore Music Theatre through Nov. 2. Nsmt.org.