This is one Broadway show that’s bound to have a very large costume budget: “Cher: The Musical.”
The pop icon tweeted a few years ago that she wanted to do a show about her life. She met with veteran musical theater writer Rick Elice to discuss some ideas. All went quiet, until this week.
On Thursday, Elice will present the first draft of his script to the show’s producers — Jeffrey Seller, riding high these days on “Hamilton,” and the fabulously named Flody Suarez, an old-time television producer who persuaded Cher to do the musical in the first place.
“They may pack me in a van and have me carted away when they see what I’ve done with her life,” says Elice. “Or I’ll start doing what [‘Gypsy’ writer] Arthur Laurents always said about musicals, ‘They don’t get written. They get rewritten.’ ”
Elice is due to present his script to Cher herself on May 20, which happens to be her 70th birthday.
“I’ll be sharing with Cher, if you will,” he says.
Elice is determined not to do a standard biomusical, though he’s no slouch in that department. He and writer Marshall Brickman did pretty well with “Jersey Boys,” the Four Seasons bio that’s been running at the August Wilson Theatre since 2005.
The problem with Cher, Elice says, is that her “life is so wildly documented. There is not much we don’t know about her. I was not a fanatical Cher fan, but when I started working on this show, I was surprised at how much I knew.”
Sources say the musical will take audiences through Cher’s life as a child, as the wife of Sonny Bono, and as the woman who finds success — and legendary status — on her own.
Three different actresses will play her at these three points in her life.
All will have long legs.
At one point, there was talk of Cher appearing in the show at the very end as herself today, but I’m told that’s probably not going to happen.
Her life is certainly big enough for a Broadway musical. The former Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPiere was born near Los Angeles, where her mother struggled to be an actress while waiting tables (shades of “Gypsy” here, I wonder?). The family moved around a lot, and never had much money. At one point, Cher wound up in an orphanage (“Annie”?).
From an early age, Cher knew she wanted to be famous. She was working as a backup singer in Los Angeles when she met Sonny Bono, also a struggling singer, in 1962. They clawed their way to the top, eventually creating TV’s fabulous “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.”
That part of the musical could have shades of “Dreamgirls” about it.
After the marriage ended in a bitter 1975 divorce, Cher reinvented herself, first as a solo singer, then as an actress. Her breakthrough on that front came when she appeared on Broadway in 1982’s “Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” Mike Nichols saw her and cast her in “Silkwood,” which began the next phase of her career: movie stardom.
(Little-known fact: “Jimmy Dean” was the only time Cher appeared on Broadway. But her close friend David Geffen at one point urged her to play Grizabella in “Cats,” which he produced with the Shuberts.)
“Cher: The Musical” — that’s the working title only, people — will touch on all these aspects of her life, along with her hits: “I Got You Babe,” “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” “Take Me Home,” “Believe,” “If I Could Turn Back Time.”
“So far, I’ve been working on this by myself — well, me and iTunes,” says Elice.
He put the show aside last year to take care of his husband, the great Roger Rees, who was fighting brain cancer. Rees died in July 2015. Three months later, Cher called. She suggested they start working again and invited him to spend time with her in California.
Says Elice: “I thought, if Roger were here, the first thing he’d say is, ‘Get on the plane and go to Cher’s house already!’ I mean, if you’re going to rejoin the human race, why not do it with Cher?”