The Cher Show

Saturday, March 22 Frank and I went to see a musical in San Jose, The Cher Show. We have season tickets to musicals at the Center For The Performing Arts. This advance purchase is a ploy on my part to get us off our duffs and out and about doing something. Well, technically, I guess we are still on our duffs in the theatre seats but we had to get dressed, drive, park, and walk to our seats, so that is something. Generally we see the outing on the calendar and inwardly groan at expending the effort to go. But, pretty much all the time, we are glad we did. The Cher Show is a shining example. It was a super enjoyable production I am so glad we attended.

We had tickets in the twelfth row, a bit off center but that meant fewer people had to squeeze past us to get to their seats. This was our view of the stage and I was fascinating by the rotating logos of Cher that were projected before showtime. I occupied my wait time before the performance by taking photos of each different logo. They rotated and people were clambering past to get in their seats so this challenge of simultaneously timing and aiming kept me busy and amused. I am not sure if I captured all the logos since some are very similar, but I compiled a collage of eight in the assortment. I challenged Frank to help me watch for any I missed. 

We perused our programs while we waited. There were three performers who performed Cher, and not necessarily one for each of the stages of her life. Sometimes the trio sang simultaneously adding richness to the song. This performance strategy was a good method to illustrate the strength and depth of Cher's voice.

The songs were familiar to me and brought back memories. All the singers were strong and energetic. The role of Sonny was well-cast and the audience chuckled as he sang his first note. Sonny Bono's voice has been described in https://singingcarrots.com.

Sonny Bono, the group's tenor, had a distinctive nasal quality to his voice that made him stand out, while Cher's powerful contralto voice was celebrated for its vibrato and emotional depth.

The costumes were fantastic, the wardrobe was expansive, and each outfit was more outrageous than the previous. No photos or video recordings of the show were permitted but the tour's website gives an excellent display of the extravagance and elegance of the wardrobe. Definitely check out https://thechershowtour.com/#videophotos, especially both videos.

In addition to being immensely entertained, I learned about Cher's life such as stories of her poor upbringing and her suffering prejudice as a "half-breed" due to her Armenian heritage on her father's side and her mother's English, German, Irish, and Cherokee ancestry. I learned of her interaction with and advice from Lucille Ball as another talented and independent woman. Her relationship with Sonny Bono was unique enough that I wondered about it and the show handled it well. My interest was whetted enough that I went home and checked out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher. I highly recommend seeing this tour when it is in your area. 

Ponder: Vengeful

Vengeful ©2018 by V.E. Schwab is the second in a two-book series themed villains. I am a fan of the author V.E. Schwab. When I reviewed the first book Vicious ©2013 in my post for 8/14/2024, I eagerly awarded it five stars.

[Vicious] was nasty, vindictive, and full of misguided motives — all reasons it should have been disturbing to read — but it was a real page turner for me.

Unfortunately my opinion of Vengeful is far less favorable. There were too many new characters and a myriad of location changes. Tens of timelines, inconsistently measured in weeks or days or hour or years and jumping about in seeming randomness, were confusing. Guidance for writing dual timelines is that each should be as interesting as the other to keep the reader engaged in both storylines. Rather than urging me on to see what comes next, I finally had to ignore the time jumps just to get through the book. Had this not been a library book I would have been sorely tempting to tear the pages apart and put them in chronological order and sub-sort by character groups. What a disappointing hodgepodge! Even if ordered chronologically, I felt the uneven character development and the non-existent path for their growth were severely lacking.

The overarching plot is that EOs, people who possess Extra Ordinary power due to having been revived from the dead, are hunted by other EO's and the government to methodically eradicate them as evil or scientifically study them as specimens. Victor, Eli, Sydney and Mitch reprise from the first book. It is Sydney and Mitch I would have liked to see morphed and brought to a resolution but I was left hanging. Instead too much focus was placed on other new villains like Marcella and a mad scientist who were very flat, boring, nasty, and hateful. One redeeming line from the book is this quote from Douglas Horton.

If you haven't read the first book Vicious do not bother with this second one Vengeful. If you have read the first book Vicious, still do not bother with Vengeful.

★☆☆☆☆ Awful but I read all of it