Cher fills her stage with wonderful excesses

by Kristina Dorsey

Mohegan -- I've discovered what Rosie O'Donnell has been doing since retiring from her talk show. She's become the tour photographer for the Cher/Cyndi Lauper tour.

Well, for one show at least. O'Donnell was sitting in the audience, front row and center, at Friday night's dual-diva concert at the Mohegan Sun Arena, and she was snapping pictures with the enthusiasm of, oh, a would-be Herb Ritts. Lauper even scampered down from the stage to pose jokingly for O'Donnell.

Then again, O'Donnell's next career might be back-up singer instead. She climbed onstage as soon as Lauper started singing out “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Dressed in casual white pants and jacket, with a beige bandanna wrapped around her head, O'Donnell sang and danced and, presumably, did have fun. She sure seemed to. She even patiently instructed Lauper on how to properly impersonate Cher, encouraging her to sing “If I Could Turn Back Time” with the appropriate hair flips and guttural (lack of) enunciation.

Uber-fan Rosie said, “What's better than a show with Cyndi Lauper and Cher? Nothing!”

Well, something that just might be better is O'Donnell giving her first stand-up comedy performance since signing off from her TV program. That's what O'Donnell will do in a private show at the Sun tonight.

Now, whether Rosie made it back onstage when headliner Cher came out Friday, I don't know; deadline bellowed four songs into Cher's set.

But I do know this much about the Cher set. It was exactly what you would expect from her – subdued and introspective. I kid. Cher is about nothing if not excess, both musically and sartorially. And, God bless her, she hasn't changed, even at age 56. The now-blonde icon made her grand entrance standing atop a chandelier that was lowered onto the stage. She wore an outfit that Dr. Zhivago would have worn had he lived in Vegas. The costume – everything Cher wears is more costume than ensemble – was a full-length, fur-trimmed coat suffused with glitter. She ripped into a dance-beat version of U2's “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For,” and she did it with the kind of big-voiced, emotionally just-this-side-of-overheated vigor that is so distinctly Cher.

She followed that up with “Song for the Lonely,” backed by eight dancers who looked as though they were extras in a desert scene in “Star Wars.”

The video screens hovering above the stage occasionally flashed to shots of the celebrities in the crowd –- Aerosmith's Steven Tyler here, O'Donnell sitting with her girlfriend, Kelli Carpenter, there.

Before her fourth song, Cher slipped into a Mackie-esque ringmaster outfit and pronounced, “This is the Cherest show on Earth.” And the marvelous three-ring circus that is Cher continued.

As for the opening act, isn't it time for a Cyndi Lauper revival? The '80s star deserves it. She blew the roof off the Arena.