Back where they belong. Bette Midler. Hello, Dolly!
Michael Stewart's (book) and Jerry Herman's (music and lyrics) masterpiece, Hello, Dolly!, returns to Broadway starring none other than Bette Midler. Directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks, Hello, Dolly! is playing Broadway's legendary Shubert Theatre.
This production, the first new production of Hello, Dolly! to appear on Broadway since it opened more than fifty years ago, will pay tribute to the original work of legendary director/choreographer Gower Champion, which has been hailed both then and now as one of the greatest stagings in musical theater history.
Ms. Midler brings such comic brio - both barn-side broad and needlepoint precise - to the task of playing with her food that I promise you it stops the show. Then again, pretty much everything Ms. Midler does stops the show. As for that much anticipated moment when she puts on fire-engine red plumes and sequins to lead a cakewalk of singing waiters, well, let's just hope that this show's producers have earthquake insurance...But Ms. Midler isn't coasting on the good will of theatergoers who remember her as the queen of 1980s movie comedies or as the bawdy earth goddess of self-satirizing revues from the '70s onward. As the center and raison d'être of this show, which also features David Hyde Pierce in a springtime-fresh cartoon of the archetypal grumpy old man, Ms. Midler works hard for her ovations, while making you feel that the pleasure is all hers.
In Midler, 'Dolly' has at last found a new headliner capable of engendering the necessary ecstasies as she swans down the famous staircase at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant, shimmering in her corseted gown, peacocky plumage sprouting like fireworks from her head. From her first entrance on a (fake) horse-drawn cart to her last bow, Midler serves up a star performance of glowing luster, rambunctious clowning and, on just a few occasions, surprising emotional delicacy. To say she sweeps all before her is to understate the feat: Without breaking into a sweat - although she pretends to wilt against the scenery, to hilarious effect, once or twice - Midler transforms this cotton-candy cloud of a musical into a bona fide theatrical event.
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