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's singing voice is in a desperate, sometimes shocking state of disrepair...As for the rest of the performance, Ms. Midler doesn't even bother to act: She simply comes on stage and plays her familiar self, albeit at a disturbingly low level of energy...Ms. Midler is playing opposite David Hyde Pierce, who is all wrong as Horace Vandergelder...He is, to be sure, a talented actor, but his lightweight charm is utterly ill-suited to the role...Jerry Zaks and Warren Carlyle, the director and choreographer, have staged this revival in a cartoonish manner...While the show itself, like all of Mr. Herman's musicals, is lapel-clutchingly cheery to the point of diminishing returns, it's not hard to see why it was and is so popular, nor is it impossible for skeptics to appreciate a production that makes the most of its cornball charms. This one makes the worst of them.
It delivers on exactly what's craved by lovers of old-school musicals from the era when giants like Merman roamed the Earth: big, gleeful performances and the kind of production numbers intended to move you as much as move along the story. Midler has the lioness's share of the lift here, delivering buoyant renditions of 'Before the Parade Passes By' and 'So Long Dearie' and, of course, executing a downstage strut in red beaded gown and feather headdress for that champagne toast of a title song. She is given expert support, though, from David Hyde Pierce, who would seem oddly cast as that grizzled skinflint and object of Dolly's nuptial desire, Horace Vandergelder. Yet he turns in a completely fresh comic performance, seasoned with just enough lemon and vinegar, and amplified by a number added for him at the top of Act 2, 'Penny in My Pocket.'
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