Review: Broadway’s ‘The Cher Show’ at Broward Center has a lot of Cher but not enough heart

The question is: Will Cher fans get enough Cher in “The Cher Show”?

The answer is: Cher … er … we mean sure.

The Broadway national tour now at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts is Cher-like, Cher-full and Cher-licious.

You’ll get 35 tunes from the Oscar-winning actor/pop music goddess’s songbook, including “If I Could Turn Back Time,” “Believe,” “Strong Enough,” “Dark Lady,” “The Beat Goes On” and “I Got You Babe.”

And you get three Chers — that is to say, three actors playing the superstar at different stages of her iconic showbizzy life: The role is nicknamed Babe (played by Ella Perez) for the 1950s and ’60s period, Lady (Catherine Ariale) in the 1970s, and Star (Morgan Scott) in the 1980s and ’90s.

So what you have is truly a Cher and Cher and … um … Cher-alike jukebox musical.

Yes, it is a glitz-blitz with seemingly endless costume changes, each with more and more spangles, dangles and bangles covering less and less body-ody-ody. The three Chers cher-ing the stage are in fine voice, striking a stunning similarity with the original here and there, particularly in their lower register. Lorenzo Pugliese as Sonny Bono captures the late star’s adenoidal tone without dipping into mimicry.

But this show’s book doesn’t get underneath the feathers, sequins and bugle beads. It doesn’t really try. Nothing, not even the ballads, gets anywhere near your soul.

And when the dialogue veers into trying to evoke deeper feelings, it comes off as too many buzz words from a motivational speaker — as in a faint whiff of those ’70s EST sessions by Werner Erhard. You half expect a “The More You Know” public service logo and jingle to pop up on the LED screens.

So what we have here is a good, but not great, Great White Way musical. “The Cher Show” would make a stellar, top-notch main stage show on a cruise ship. And, no, that is not a diss — it’s just that the vibe is giving us cruise control.

Mostly the hits are wedged into the narrative well — “Strong Enough” fits perfectly — during the two-hour show with a 15-minute intermission. Some will find the stop-and-start-again versions of songs with bits of dialogue interspersed to be a heightening of the drama, while others may find it ever-so-slightly frustrating.

There also are one or two puzzlers. For example, why are Bob Mackie and the Cher-ses (Cher-ies? Cher-multiverse?) singing the old blues tune “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”?

“The Cher Show” opened on Broadway in December 2018 and closed in August 2019, the same year the Tonys awarded the real Bob Mackie the trophy for “best costumes.”

You just can’t get enough of him Cher-ing his genius for spectacle, something the show does share with us splendidly.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “The Cher Show”

WHEN: Through Sunday, Nov. 24

WHERE: Au-Rene Theater inside Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale

COST: $45-$176

INFORMATION: 954-462-0222 (press 1); browardcenter.org or Ticketmaster.com