Hello, Bette! Take Your Afternoon Coffee Break with Broadway's Next Dolly Levi

Bette's coming home, and she'll never go away again. As BroadwayWorld reported this morning, Bette Midler will indeed return to Broadway in one of the most cherished shows in musical theater history when she takes on the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi in Michael Stewart's (book) and Jerry Herman's (music and lyrics) masterpiece, Hello, Dolly!. Directed by four-time Tony Award® winner Jerry Zaks, Hello, Dolly! will begin performances on Broadway on March 13, 2017, with an official opening night of April 20, 2017. Rehearsals begin one year from today.

"I am looking forward to portraying one of the most beloved characters in all of American Musical Comedy, Dolly Levi, born Gallagher, in Hello, Dolly!" said Ms. Midler. "I know I'm going to have the time of my life, and I am so glad to be under the wings of Scott Rudin as Producer and Jerry Zaks as Director. See you next year!"

In a legendary career spanning five unbroken decades of matchless cultural relevance, Bette Midler is a performer who thrillingly continues to defy categorization. She is a recording artist who has sold more than 35 million albums and won four Grammy Awards. She is a stage performer who has, year after year and in show after show, sold out the largest venues around the globe across more than a dozen tours. She is a Tony Award, three-time Emmy, three-time Golden Globe-winning and twice Academy Award-nominated actress who made her Broadway debut in the original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in 1967, and went on to star in dozens of blockbuster films, creating some of the most iconic screen performances in cinematic history. Throughout the 1970's, she brought to Broadway three well-loved concert events: Bette Midler (in 1973, and for which she received a special Tony Award), Bette Midler's Clams on the Half Shell Revue (in 1975), and Bette! Divine Madness (in 1979). In 2013, Midler returned to the Broadway stage, after a nearly 40-year absence, to star in the one-woman play I'll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers in which she played the legendary Hollywood agent, wowing critics and selling out performance after performance in a run that broke the house record at the Booth Theatre. In addition to being one of the best-loved, most versatile, and instantly recognizable entertainers in the world, Midler is also a great and abiding New Yorker and one of its most generous and tireless citizens. In 1994, she started the New York Restoration Project, a non-profit organization devoted to bringing abandoned and neglected parks, gardens and open spaces in all five boroughs back to abundant life.

In honor of the big announcement, BroadwayWorld is inviting you to fill your afternoon coffee break with the Divine Miss M. Take five with some Broadway classics and Midler standards below!

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