The road company of "The Cher Show," a musical biography of the famous actress and singer, opens on Friday night at Mesa Arts Center.
Cher expert Mary McCray joined The Show to talk about what the famous icon means to a whole lot of people.
Full conversation
ROBRT PELA: "The Cher Show" has come to town, but perhaps more importantly, so has Mary McCray, who's driven here from her home in New Mexico to see the Cher Show when it opens tonight at Mesa Arts Center.
Mary has devoted a big chunk of her adult life to parsing Cher's meaning in popular culture and in using Cher's “Cherness” as a means of observing women and art and ideas about who they are in the 21st century.
She mostly does this through a 26-year-old project called "Share Scholar." Mary McCray is also — do I need to tell you — a great big giant Cher fan.
So in the show, Cher is played by three different actors. Is that right?
McCRAY: It is. Yeah, the show was set up with three different Chers. I'm of two minds about it though.
PELA: Tell me.
McCRAY: Because I kind of think that maybe there should be five Chers.
PELA: Five.
McCRAY: Yes, I feel three is not enough. There's a ‘60s Cher, there's a ‘70s Cher, and then there's an ‘80s and beyond Cher, and that seems like a huge, huge piece of work for one Cher to do. She's never boring.
PELA: She's also not really like any other person, so how does Cher represent American women in the 21st century?
McCRAY: A lot of pop stars get the cultural commentary treatment such as like Taylor Swift now is getting great cultural commentary. Madonna for years has been getting good commentary, but Cher was ridiculed for so many years. There's so much great information to mine about Cher's cultural meaning now.
I think we could spend an hour just talking about that question you just asked. I think 20 years ago I did a survey of Cher fans and non-Cher fans, and I asked them what's the word that you think signifies “Cher” and most people said resilience and strength.
PELA: Let's talk about the Cher show, the musical. You've seen it on Broadway.
McCRAY: I did, yeah.
PELA: And does the musical do her justice?
McCRAY: Nobody in any universe is going to Cher justice, but I'm happy it exists. I'm happy there's an artifact out there that is trying to give her meaning.
PELA: OK, so if you were told you could only listen to one Cher song for the rest of your life, what would it be? Just one.
McCRAY: There's a song Sonny wrote that ended up on a 1971 duet album called “Somebody,” and that would be the song. Do you want me to tell you what I like about that song?
PELA: I do.
McCRAY: Well, that song, it starts with “wonder.” There's actually the word, wonder, and then she references herself in it. She calls herself Cher, which is unprecedented. There's no other song that does that. And then the song just, like, expands into this openhearted thing that ends with this gospel choir. It's lovely.
PELA: You know, you've done a lot of work to kind of help those of us who like Cher music to see the way she represents other things in the world. You have us thinking about Cher as iconography, but I think the thing that you've done that I enjoy the most is you've forgiven me for liking “She's No Better Than Me,” which is my favorite Cher song.
McCRAY: It's so typical that you would pick a rare —
PELA: I love it.
McCRAY: It's a beautiful song.
PELA: It is nice, yeah.
