‘Nothing Is Too Much’

She's over the top in more ways than one, that Cher.

If you want to keep your reputation for concert spectacle, sometimes you've got to cross that bridge that runs 54 feet over the stage. Or take a ride to the rafters in a little wired-up chariot.

"Nothing is too much for Cher. She'll go beyond what other artists will do," says Doriana Sanchez, Cher's longtime director-choreographer.

Last week, Sanchez watched her star climb to the top of a prop piece only planned for dancers to scale; perhaps a Xanax-inducing moment for those underwriting the 61-year-old star's next 197 shows at Caesars Palace.

"It's just me," Cher explained when the show was announced in February. "It's me and my ideas of what a show should be like."

And it nearly always has been that way. Cher has always embraced spectacle. "First, I was kind of nervous to be onstage by myself," she noted.

And second, "It would have bored me to tears to go out and just do some kind of normal-ish show where we weren't doing fabulous things with a 20-foot-tall high heel, and riding a mechanical bull and stuff like that. That's what I wanted to do."

For years, she adds, "People thought we were stupid and ridiculous and corny and all that stuff... But then everybody started doing it. It took them a lot longer."

Cher's most recent tour visited Las Vegas four times, sporting bungee-jumpers and puppet elephants that seemed quite at home on the Strip. But the extravaganza still had to pack up into 14 trucks each night and roll to the next city.

The new show, which opened Tuesday in the 4,200-seat Colosseum, is a cross between a one-night tour stop and a permanent installation such as Cirque du Soleil's "Ka." When Cher performs on the Strip, she will do month-long stretches.

The production does have to load out to make way for Bette Midler and Elton John. "But the trucks are only going to a warehouse in Las Vegas. It's a tour that goes across the street," says James "Winky" Fairorth, president of Tait Towers, which built the set.

Cher explains the newfound possibilities with a comparison that won't win her a door pass to a sci-fi convention: "What's the movie? Not 'Star Trek,' what's the other one? Yeah, 'Star Wars.' Remember when they went into hyperspace? That's what it's like. We're just gonna take off into hyperspace."

"We have so much stuff that we're going to be doing because we're just able to," Cher added. "Things come out from the floor, things come out from the sides. We were just never able to do that on the road."

"Basically, what we've done is built a theater within a theater," says production designer Jeremy Railton. Audience members who don't see other acts at the Colosseum will assume the two freestanding towers supporting the 65-foot, 10,000- pound bridge in the middle are permanent.

But only the steel support base beneath the towers is rooted; the structures themselves snap together with latches. "No tools required, just big, grumpy, heavy men," Fairorth says.

The set evokes an arena-rock concert while craftily carving down the Colosseum's impossibly wide 120-foot playing area. And audiences will be seeing less of the giant high-definition screen that was the focal point of Celine Dion's "A New Day" and John's "The Red Piano."

"The big danger, which everybody does now, is that the screen becomes so important that you end up watching TV," says Railton. "We've got to the point where screens have matured and you can use them as a tool to support the performer."

Real scenery -- including very old-fashioned hinged panels of painted artwork -- move on and offstage to add a extra dimension to the screen projections.

Cher has a quick-change room under the bridge. "Changing her is like an Indy 500 pit stop," Fairorth says. Other dancers have full dressing rooms curtained off behind the giant screen.

"What Cher wanted for this show was that every song was different. Every single one," says Railton. "We go from beautiful soft twinkle-light sets to hard-ass, rock 'n' roll, in-your-face kind of stuff, so there's this big range."

"I think when people come to see this show," Sanchez adds, "they're going to have a big rock 'n' roll show -- we call it a BRS -- but also they're going to have a theatrical experience."

Some of the calmer moments include rare film footage of Sonny and Cher's earliest performances.

"The hope is that people don't come out singing the scenery," Railton says. "The scenery just supports what she does. She doesn't need all this stuff."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.