Hello Dolly

[+ beethoven]

I didn't know that Bette Midler is scheduled to leave. When is Donna Murphy taking over?

[bostonman]

I hear through the theatre chat boards that Midler is ad-lobbing to the audience A LOT in the way that Beethoven mentions in his post. I know the audiences seem to eat that up, but it sounds to me like she's overusing the privilege lol.

[+ WilliamM]

I hear through the theatre chat boards that Midler is ad-lobbing to the audience A LOT in the way that Beethoven mentions in his post. I know the audiences seem to eat that up, but it sounds to me like she's overusing the privilege lol.

 

I am not surprised. Zero Mostel did the same thing when I saw "Fiddler on the Roof" revival. I believe Ethel Merman added a song by Roger Edens to the poor score of "Happy Hunting." Merman was famous for seldom changing anything, so her action is more understandable.

[dcguy20]

I didn't know that Bette Midler is scheduled to leave. When is Donna Murphy taking over?

 

After the Tony Awards, Bette Midler will only be doing seven performances. Donna Murphy is scheduled to play Dolly on Tuesday evenings, and during Bette's vacations throughout the run. Telecharge has the list of dates, but I believe Bette Midler will be out the last week of June and first week of July.

[bostonman]

I am not surprised. Zero Mostel did the same thing when I saw "Fiddler on the Roof" revival. I believe Ethel Merman added a song by Roger Edens to the poor score of "Happy Hunting." Merman was famous for seldom changing anything, so her action is more understandable.

 

I understand Mostel did it during A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum as well - as did Mickey Rooney on a tour of that show.

[N13]

Same with Buddy Hackett in "I Had a Ball." Saw it a few times and the same break-ups and ad libs in the same places.

[bostonman]

Same with Buddy Hackett in "I Had a Ball." Saw it a few times and the same break-ups and ad libs in the same places.

 

From what I know, Mostel (and Rooney) were less predictable. I remember reading that Mostel would come out and give the latest sports scores, etc. I'm. It sure he had specific bits he did every time.

 

In the Nathan Lane revival of Forum, there was a planned ad lib routine where Lane would do a speed-thru of the opening of the show for latecomers.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

If only Midler would stop with the 'I'm such a tired old lady' schtick. She did it in Vegas. She did it in her last tour. She's doing it now in Dolly when going up on lines and 'ad libbing' to fill space. I hope that as she settles into this run, she can focus on creating a character. I also know I'm in the minority here on not being totally blown away by what I've seen of her so far.

 

Donna Murphy is going to kill in this role. She can belt. She can act. She's not a name outside of the theatre world, but I can't wait to see what she does with the role.

[N13]

As I have said before, Betty Grable was the only Dolly that created a character and did not rely on her own persona. In my opinion because of this she was the best Dolly.

[+ WilliamM]

Donna Murphy is going to kill in this role. She can belt. She can act. She's not a name outside of the theatre world, but I can't wait to see what she does with the role.

 

Thanks, Benjamin. I chose "Funny Girl" instead of "Hello Dolly" in 1964 and never regretted that decision. I have seen Donna Murphy a few times and agree with your comments.

[N13]

Thanks, Benjamin. I chose "Funny Girl" instead of "Hello Dolly" in 1964 and never regretted that decision. ......

 

I see you started making wise decisions at an early age! Totally agree you made the right choice!

[edjames]

A certifiable smash hit....now try to get a ticket, without paying an enormous amount of money! Another Hamilton!

The question is, given the success of the box office will Bette extend her run?

 

Review: ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Is Bright, Brassy and All Bette

HELLO, DOLLY!

By BEN BRANTLEYAPRIL 20, 2017

• 
  Bette Midler, center, as Dolly Gallagher Levi in “Hello, Dolly!” at the Shubert Theater.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
   
  The pinnacle of fine dining in New York these days can’t be found in a Michelin-starred restaurant, though it will probably cost you just as much. No, you’ll have to get yourself and your wide-open wallet to the Shubert Theater, where the savory spectacle of Bette Midler eating turns out to be the culinary event of the year.
   
  Ms. Midler — who opened in the title role of “Hello, Bette!,” I mean “Hello, Dolly!,” on Thursday night — not only knows how to make a meal out of a juicy part; she knows how to make a meal out of a meal. In the second act of this exceedingly bright and brassy revival, Ms. Midler can be found sitting alone at a table, slowly and deliberately polishing off the remnants of an expensive dinner, from a turkey bone dipped in gravy to a multitude of dumplings, while the rest of the cast freezes in open-mouthed amazement.
   
  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.
   
  Back on a Broadway stage in a book musical for the first time (can it be?) since “Fiddler on the Roof” half a century ago, Ms. Midler is generating a succession of seismic responses that make Trump election rallies look like Quaker prayer meetings. Her audiences, of course, are primed for Ms. Midler to give them their money’s worth in Jerry Zaks’s revival of this 1964 portrait of a human steamroller out to land a rich husband in 19th-century New York. The show was a scalper’s delight from the moment tickets went on sale.
  

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 the process she deftly shoves the clamorous memories of Carol Channing (who created the role on Broadway) and Barbra Streisand (in the

) at least temporarily into the wings.

 

The show as a whole — which has been designed by Santo Loquasto to resemble a bank of Knickerbocker-themed, department store Christmas windows — could benefit from studying how its star earns her laughs and our love. Playing the pushiest of roles, the endlessly enterprising matchmaker Dolly Levi, Ms. Midler never pushes for effect. Her every bit of shtick has been precisely chosen and honed, and rather than forcing it down our throats, she makes us come to her to admire it.

 

Much of the rest of Mr. Zaks’s production charges at us like a prancing elephant, festooned in shades of pink. This is true of the hot pastels of Mr. Loquasto’s sets and costumes, and of Warren Carlyle’s athletic golden-age-of-musicals choreography, which is both expert and exhausting.

 

 

An antic “Hello, Dolly!” ensemble, from left: Kate Baldwin as Irene Molloy, Bette Midler as Dolly Gallagher Levi, Beanie Feldstein as Minnie Fay and Taylor Trensch as Barnaby Tucker. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

When an onstage laugh is called for, it comes out as a deafening cackle or a guffaw, which is then stretched and repeated. Double takes, grins and grimaces are magnified into crushing largeness, while the chase sequences bring to mind slap-happy Blake Edwards comedies. Even reliably charming performers like Gavin Creel and Kate Baldwin, who play the plot’s supporting lovers (with Taylor Trensch and Beanie Feldstein as their second bananas), seem under the impression they’re in a Mack Sennett farce.

 

My audience couldn’t have been more tickled by these hard-sell tactics, which hew closely to Gower Champion’s original staging. A tone of sunny desperation isn’t out of keeping with what seems to be this production’s escapist mission, which is to deliver nostalgia with an exclamation point.

 

Featuring a book by Michael Stewart and a tenaciously wriggling earworm of a score by Jerry Herman (given gleaming orchestral life here), “Hello, Dolly!” is a natural vehicle for rose-colored remembrance. It was adapted from Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker,” which grew out of his “The Merchant of Yonkers,” itself adapted from an 1842 Austrian reworking of an 1835 American one-acter.

 

With its folksy wisdom and air of life-affirming wonder, Wilder’s script translated fluently into the hyperbole of a big song-and-dance show, which spoke (loudly) not only of a more innocent age of American history but also of a time when musicals were upbeat spectacles, with outsize stars to match. (Ms. Channing was succeeded by a cavalcade of divas, from Ethel Merman to Pearl Bailey.) Don’t forget that “Hello, Dolly!” opened just two months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when the United States felt anything but united.

 

Photo

Bette Midler, left, as Dolly Gallagher Levi, sets her sights on David Hyde Pierce, as the wealthy widower Horace Vandergelder, in “Hello, Dolly!” CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

The genius of casting Ms. Midler as Dolly, a widow who decides to rejoin life by marrying the rich and curmudgeonly Horace Vandergelder (Mr. Pierce), is that she built her career on making nostalgia hip. Even when she was sassing and strutting for the gay boys at the Continental Baths in her youth (when the original “Hello, Dolly!” was still on the boards), she was channeling entertainers from the days of burlesque.

 

With Ms. Midler, such hommages were never merely camp. She exuded bone-deep affection and respect for vaudeville stylings, in which impeccably controlled artifice became a conduit for sentimentality as well as rowdy humor. That affinity pervades every aspect of her Dolly, which is less a fluid performance than a series of calculated gestures that somehow coalesce into a seamless personality.

 

Consider, for starters, her hydraulic walk, made up of short, chugging steps. (A real train materializes for the big “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” number, but Ms. Midler is the real locomotive wonder.) Or her take-charge New Yawk accent, spiced with the insinuating inflections of

. Or her stylized collapse into exhaustion in the middle of the title song.

 

Without stripping gears, she makes fast switches from explosive comedy to a sober emotionalism that never cloys. (Her pop hits, you may remember, include the weepy

) And her final scenes with Mr. Pierce, who delivers a beautifully drawn caricature (and is rewarded with a solo that was cut from the original), may leave you with tears in your eyes without your quite understanding why.

 

Ms. Midler’s talents have never included a conventionally pretty voice. Yet when she rasps out the anthem “Before the Parade Passes By,” you hear her voice as that of a nightingale. And when she hikes up her period skirts to shuffle her feet, she gives the impression she’s dancing up a storm.

 

She’s not, of course. (Her kicks in her big numbers are only from the knees.) But a great star performance is at least 50 percent illusion, conjured by irresistible will power and cunning. Ms. Midler arranges her component parts with the seductive insistence with which Dolly Levi arranges other people’s lives.

 

After two acts of fending off Dolly’s charms, Horace finds himself proclaiming, in happy defeat, “Wonderful woman!” Nobody is about to argue with him.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Clearly, I'm in the minority when it comes to this revival. It's not that I disliked Dolly, but I am quicker to semi-agree with this review than many of the others:

 

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat_new/d.php?id=2373706

[Larstrup]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10154556806662061

[handiacefailure]

I'm in NYC this weekend and hoping I can get tickets to it. I rarely see the same show twice with the same cast but want to see it again just to see Bette perform hello dolly. I thought Gavin was really good (and nice eye candy to boot lol)

[+ WilliamM]

Clearly, I'm in the minority when it comes to this revival. It's not that I disliked Dolly, but I am quicker to semi-agree with this review than many of the others:

 

I read Jesse's review as well before the New York Times review. His comments about late middle-age Bette Midler rang true with me too.

[foxy]

Saw it years ago with Carol Channing. I can pass on this revival especially for what's being charged for tickets. If I need to see Bette I'll go watch Beaches.

[Kenny]

I'm waiting for the revival with RuPaul.

[Kenny]

 

1965: Mary Martin in Hello Dolly in Vietnam

What an odd juxtaposition of headlines.

[+ WilliamM]

http://static.playbill.com/dims4/default/a42c5e3/2147483647/crop/720x405%2B0%2B197/resize/970x546/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.playbill.com%2F6c%2Fe6%2F92cbc8654bb5a51ab0a702ec1cdb%2Funknown-1.jpeg

 

Bette Midler and Carol Channing at Carol's home at Palm Springs -- not necessarily a recent photo. Channing is now 96-years old.

[jerrybythesea]

Saw Bette in Hello Dolly.......5 stars for the show and Bette!!! Highly recommended that you get a good orch seat or first 3 rows in Fr Mezz

[+ WilliamM]

 

Clearly Ethel Merman made the correct decision to turn down Hello Dolly. She spent two years on Broadway with Gypsy and then also toured the United States with the musical. By the time Merman agreed to be the last Broadway Dolly around 1970, she could relax and just have a good time.

Edited April 25, 2017 by WilliamM

[+ beethoven]

I just read Hilton Als' review in the New Yorker (May 1 issue). This magazine, which is known as the paragon of fact-checking and proof reading, writes that the show is at the Schubert Theater. What has happened to standards in this Age of Trump? Oh, the humanity!

But seriously, David Remnick's "Talk of the Town" in this issue is perhaps the longest, and definitely the best, editorial I've read in quite a while. Devastating!! We must keep up the good fight!

[Kenny]

just read Hilton Als' review in the New Yorker (May 1 issue). This magazine, which is known as the paragon of fact-checking and proof reading, writes that the show is at the Schubert Theater.

If you have a Pulitzer, shouldn't you be able to spell-check?

[MrMiniver]

I was watching Judy Garland's weekly Sunday night variety show the night Streisand was a guest (Fall, 1963). They were good together.

 

Suddenly Ethel Merman started singing from the audience. Judy brought Merman on stage. Judy noticed that Barbra looked overwhelmed by Merman. so Garland included Streisand in the conversation from that point on. Garland was uncomfortable as a host, but her kindness showed

often..

 

You must have seen a different clip than I saw. That's been on Youtube for years and Streisand couldn't be more arrogant or condescending towards Merman if she tried. It's embarassing. She's a true bitch.

 

As for the current Hello Dolly. It's atrocious. Read Terry Teachout's review. It's spot on. Midler's voice is in tatters, she's awful. Hyde Pierce is horribly miscast.

 

Streisand was too young for the film, and Midler is too old for the stage.