'Match Gayme' turns back time with all-drag, all-Cher cast

Remember the Match Game, the old television game show where contestants tried to match fill-in-the-blank answers with celebrity guests?

Questions led to sometimes-silly, sometimes-suggestive and sometimes spot-on answers from celebrities like Charles Nelson Reilly, whose double entendres kept 1970s television censors on their toes.

1 Rockett Productions has updated the concept for the new millennium with “Match Gayme: Cher and Cher Alike,” coming April 20 to Greer Cabaret Theater in downtown Pittsburgh.

Panelist spots will be filled by a cast of drag queens, each impersonating Cher from a different era (or “Cher-a,” as producer and host Joe King says) in her 50-plus-year career — from “I Got You Babe” to “Mamma Mia.”

Contestants chosen from the audience will answer Cher-related questions and play for prizes — and surprises — according to the co-presenter, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Your personal Cher

“Our ‘Match Gayme: Cher and Cher Alike’ will feature a very diverse variety of ‘Cher-personators’ of all colors, shapes and size,” King says, “because everyone can find a strong Cher diva in themselves, and it’s important to see that represented on stage, too.”

Special guest Jennifer Warner says she will be “the burlesque Cher, the snazzy, half-naked Cher from the ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ era.”

Described on her Facebook page as a “performer, socialite, pageant judge, emcee, LGBTQ activist, world traveler” and more, the Virginia Beach, Va., resident says Pittsburgh has been like a second home to her since the late 1990s, when she won the 1997 Miss Tri-State All Star title.

“It’s a beauty pageant for drag queens and transsexuals, and it was a very prestigious title back in the ’90s,” she says.

Pittsburgh’s own Sharon Needles, drag performer, recording artist and winner of season four of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” also will appear.

“She’s a legend in the LGBT community, and I’m so excited that she’ll be here,” King says. “I’m biting my nails as to what she might say.”

‘All outrageous fun’

King has been organizing Match Gayme events for about eight years, but this is the first one with a Cher theme.

“Our show introduces impersonators and drag talent to an audience that may not necessarily be comfortable going to a gay club, while raising money for various charitable organizations,” King says. “It’s part game show, part drag show and all outrageous fun.

“The original conception was to have Pittsburgh celebrities, like Mayor Peduto and local entertainers who could do impressions,” he says.

That evolved into shows with all-drag line-ups, built around themes like “The Golden Girls” and “Madea Meets the Sanderson Sisters” (the witchy trio from the 1993 film “Hocus Pocus”). Later this year, there will be shows featuring the Shady Bunch, honoring the 50th anniversary of “The Brady Bunch,” and a shagadelic Austin Powers theme.

Enthusiasm for the Cher show has been so great that it “practically wrote itself,” King says. “As soon as I started asking (people to perform), the yeses started flying in. Usually, we have four to six celebrity panelists, but in this one, I think we’ll have eight Chers.”

A portion of proceeds will benefit Project Silk, a Pittsburgh-based initiative providing support to young men and transgender women of color in the Pittsburgh region.