Redneck tenor

PROMOTERS OF CHER at Caesars Palace's Colosseum are making nearly as big a deal of the show's costumer as they are the creature onstage, wrapped up in his work. "A woman who wears my clothes is not afraid to be noticed," fashion designer Bob Mackie once said, and he could have gone much further; not only are Mackie clients Cher, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli, Elton John, Bette Midler and Madonna not the types to shy from public notice, they represent a human subspecies who need the public's notice like oxygen. Without it, they'd die. Most of us would suffocate under the weight of attention drawn by chain-link fabrics, sequins, feathers and extravagant headwear, but these mutants pull it off, amassing enough extra strength through their Mackie-made super suits to fuel all the yowls and jazz-hands needed to keep diehard fans rapturous and the rest of the world in a similarly incapacitating state of hypnotized indigestion.

It doesn't matter where you fall. Just like there's no such thing as bad press, bad attention doesn't exist either. Ask any 2-year-old. When "flamboyant," "legendary," "iconic" (press-kit keywords) Cher floated over the heads of a packed house and descended to the Colosseum stage in a gilded, light-festooned cage while belting lines from her stolen opener -- U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" -- we all knew she was there just as surely as if she'd taken all the kitchen pots and pans and thrown them down the stairs. Bad Cher! Bad! Hear all that clapping and whistling? It's because you were bad.

Once out of her cage, the 62-year-old superstar of mainstream music, television and film sauntered to and fro in 50 pounds of faux-Siamese dancer regalia, sleepy-eyed, serene, nodding little dojo bows to all audience sections and apologizing in advance for a hoarseness that never mattered. This was Cher. This was the vamp-camp scamp who'd already held court for decades with a disarming balance of haughtiness and candor. "This really is a great show, even if I wasn't in it ... alright, it'd be crap if I wasn't in it," she said, following with a recap of her career, including the humiliating dive in popularity and "IRS hell" she suffered alongside late ex-husband and performing partner Sonny Bono in the '70s.

A baker's dozen of tunes follow ("If I Could Turn Back Time," "Strong Enough," 1998's smash-from-nowhere "Believe" at encore), interspersed with a Sonny-heavy series of video clips for added wistfulness and whimsy. Eighteen dancers and aerialists back Cher up in a show that boasts 140 total costume changes and an endlessly morphing set. It's the big Strip beast you'd expect, even if its central character often lacks the energy shared by her entourage. Physically, that is. The scary low voice is still there, part k.d. Lang, part Nashville Skyline-era Bob Dylan -- not such a bad thing unless it's featured in a cover of Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield" (post-apocalyptic costumes, half-assed execution) or a mid-show medley combining Peaches & Herb's "Shake Your Groove Thing" with Village People's "YMCA." Then it's a bad thing.

Cher gabbed, bellowed, pandered and moved around sedately while many of us squirmed, and yet a written report can't quite get across why it was all OK. Part of it was just a matter of knowing and accepting her identity. We've had more than 40 years to learn who she is; what else would we expect from Cher in a Cher show called Cher? Then again, what is this identity? The woman's legacy of garish dress, promiscuous stylization and straight cheese is a reality ripe for extended Vegas engagement, but there's more to it than that. Neither Mackie's frippery nor years of plastic surgery can mask the shot of artless redneck biker chick so integral to Cher's mass appeal. You could see it as soon as she touched down from above, decked out in ridiculous royal-wear, still shapely, still the bizarre, shamelessly eclectic Earth-mother-gypsy-princess-retro-future rock diva, but one with a tomboy swagger and a conversational clumsiness that even things out. How Cher sees herself at this point is anyone's guess, but we can at least adapt Mackie's line and say this for her, with all due, unironic respect: Any woman who fills her shoes is not afraid to look stupid.

OFF-OFF-STRIP

In an unusual development on the community theater front, Westcare Charter School science teacher Mike Nair tells CityLife he's astounded at what his 12-to-17-year-old at-risk students -- those struggling with behavioral and/or emotional problems -- have done with Meet John Doe, Andrew Gerle's stage version of the 1941 Frank Capra classic. Anyone who knows theater knows that, in the end, good theater is where you find it. Try looking here for some, done by young performers with nothing to prove.