Aisle View: Hello, Bette!

--which turned fifty in 2014--is coming back to the lights of 44th Street (or thereabouts) in the spring of 2017, with the outsized title role essayed by the outsized Bette Midler.
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Hello, Dolly!--which turned fifty in 2014--is coming back to the lights of 44th Street (or thereabouts) in the spring of 2017, with the outsized title role essayed by the outsized Bette Midler.

Dolly, one of the juiciest creations in musical comedy annals, has always worked best with a larger-than-life leading lady; a walking cartoon, if you will. Ms. Midler has been a walking cartoon since she exploded on the scene in 1970 at the Continental Baths. (That was a gay bathhouse, unusually enough; but then, Midler was and is nothing if not unusual.) During her first decades of fame, Midler was not only way too young to consider Dolly!; Broadway was way too square for the artist quickly anointed "The Divine Miss M."

The traditional Broadway musical, that is. Midler did bring her nightclub act to the Palace for three sold-out weeks in December 1973; Broadway was so undernourished at the time that the powers deemed fit to reward her with a special Tony Award "for adding lustre to the Broadway season." Midler returned for limited, smashingly successful visits in 1975 (with her Clams on the Half Shell Revue) and 1979 (with Bette! Divine Madness).

Times change, though, and careers change. (And yes, audiences change.) Midler, who just hit seventy last month, finally made it back to Broadway in 2013 with I'll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers. The three-month engagement must have agreed with her, as she has now signed up for what one would guess must be in the range of a year or so of Dolly!

The show was the biggest hit of its time, coming in a succession of "can't-get-a-ticket" blockbusters that includes Oklahoma! South Pacific, My Fair Lady, A Chorus Line and the current Book of Mormon and Hamilton. Dolly! was the brainchild of David Merrick. At the start of his producing career--when, as an upstart outsider, he was unable to attract top talent--he found a production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Wildly determined to get the U.S. transfer rights, he gave Ruth Gordon (the star) and Tyrone Guthrie (the director) everything they demanded. The Matchmaker came to the Royale in 1955 and became Merrick's first "class" hit. (He had many early hits, but few were considered classy.)

Merrick carried the idea of Matchmaker close to his heart--if, indeed, he had a heart--and within nine years transformed it into a musical. The success of Bye, Bye Birdie (1960) led Merrick to hire that show's director/choreographer Gower Champion and librettist Michael Stewart for Carnival! (1961), the success of which convinced him to assign Champion and Stewart to his beloved Matchmaker. With the addition of composer/lyricist Jerry Herman (of Milk and Honey), Hello, Dolly! opened in Detroit in the fall of 1963. After a troubled start, it was cobbled and altered and instantly embraced--upon its opening at the St. James, in January 1964--as the biggest hit since My Fair Lady.

The original production of Dolly! ran seven years, amassing a total of 2,844 performances. That's nothing compared to what we see nowadays; Phantom is presently about to start its 29th year, while mid-level musicals like Beauty and the Beast and Mamma Mia! easily top the 13-year mark. At the time, though, no Broadway musicals other than Oklahoma! (2,212) and My Fair Lady (2,717) had even hit 2,000.

The Dolly! record was short-lived; Fiddler on the Roof opened nine months after the Merrick show, and broke the record nine months after Dolly! closed. The twin 1964 musical classics led parallel lives through their early existence. Dolly! was, arguably, the hotter ticket, both on Broadway and on the road (with multiple companies playing both in the United States and overseas). At least through the 1970s, that is, after which the evergreen Fiddler has somewhat supplanted Dolly! in the public memory. A younger generation of audiences was introduced to the show in 2008, thanks to the use of "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment" in the Disney-Pixar movie "WALL-E."

Carol Channing created the role, eventually leaving to take the show on the road. Merrick's other Dollys included not only movie stars like Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable, Eve Arden and Dorothy Lamour, but Broadway's two greatest musical comedy stars of the Golden Age: Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. All of them, though, seemed to be playing Dolly; only Carol and Pearl Bailey--who re-envisioned the role in 1967--seemed to be Dolly. (The role was played in the film version, as you might recall, by Barbra Streisand.)

The original closed the last week of 1970, and--at a time when Broadway revivals where as rare as they are commonplace today--quickly returned with new productions starring Bailey (in 1975) and Channing (in 1979). After which, Dolly! began to fade. The show remained a strong touring attraction, but the only subsequent Broadway visit has been Channing's return engagement in 1995. Dolly! was still glowin' and crowin' and goin' strong, yes; but the still-vibrant Carol had been playing the role, on and off, for thirty years, and the production had the air of a museum piece. Post-Channing revivals have been contemplated ever since, but never got past the problem of star casting.

But along, finally, comes Bette Midler--whose only Broadway musical appearance thus far, coincidentally enough, was a three-year stint as Tevye's eldest daughter Tzeitel during the long original run of Fiddler on the Roof. While it is impossible to predict, it is anticipated that Midler will make a larger-than-life Dolly in the tradition of Channing and Bailey. Jerry Herman--the only surviving member of the 1964 team (aside from Carol Channing, that is)--has turned eager thumbs up for Bette, and now the production team is set. Jerry Zaks (Guys and Dolls) will direct and Warren Carlyle (Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway) will choreograph, with showman Scott Rudin at the helm.

So we can look forward to saying "hello, Dolly!" once more--and "hello, Bette!"--with the gala opening night on April 20, 2017.

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