Cher brings her hits, glitz to Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS - Like the temples of the ancient Roman world that it simulates, the Colosseum at Caesars Palace is an environment suited to extravagant immortals. The artists who've graced its huge stage have achieved that status in which one name not only serves but also explains and expands upon whatever the star projects.
    Tuesday night, the ultimate Colosseum dweller arrived. Cher - the cherished icon of pop reinvention, beloved by freaks and squares, gay liberationists and straight soccer moms, Netflix-renting couch potatoes and rump-shaking disco denizens - used every possible corner of the stage (as well as several huge screens and the walls) to present a signature performance based upon her larger-than-life story, a mythology of self-reinvention in which we can all . . .oh, you get the idea.
    Cher's occupation of the Colosseum, where she will play 200 shows over the next three years (rotating with Bette Midler and Elton John), is the most appropriate thing to happen to Las Vegas since rumors started flying that rock 'n' roll magician Criss Angel was dating former Playboy bunny Pamela Anderson.
    Like Vegas itself, the 62-year-old queen of over-the-top pizazz bridges several eras of entertainment. Since the 1960s, when she and her former husband, the late Sonny Bono, transformed from would-be folkies into mainstream translators of the counterculture, this singer-actress-fashion extremist has crossed a surprising number or musical boundaries.
    ''I'm old, but I'm tough,'' she said after floating from the rafters to the stage on a sparkling contraption she called ''the Flying Wallenda Evel Knievel Deathmobile,'' wearing a huge feathered headdress and singing U2's ''I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.'' The elaborate entrance established that this Cher show would be bigger and better than the others; the endearingly rambling monologue that followed assured fans that this was still the same old Cher.
    The show was lavish, nonstop fun, with the usual array of outlandish Bob Mackie costumes and stage sets that reworked Cher's story as a spangled fantasy. The content will be familiar to anyone who's seen her past few tours. There was a medley of the Sonny Bono-era hits, with appropriate costume changes - a gypsy outfit for ''Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves'' and a floor-length feather headdress and a loincloth for ''Half Breed.'' More recent songs, such as ''If I Could Turn Back Time'' and the must-have closer ''Believe'' (perhaps the greatest disco song written after the alleged death of disco), filled out the set list, along with covers she's long favored, like ''Love Hurts.''
    Screen montages paid tribute to Cher's television and film career, with special, sentimental emphasis on Sonny. The onstage activity was as intense as the onscreen collage effect. Her live band behaved like rockers, with flashy guitar solos and hot moves, even when the music was dominated by dance beats.