Bette Midler takes on the title role in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway in spring 2017
Broadway theatregoers will once again have a chance to say ‘Hello, Dolly!’ And this time it will be Bette Midler portraying the indefatigable matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi. The news broke this week that Midler – also known rightly as the Divine Miss M – will star in a revival of the classic musical to open on 20 April 2017. Previews are scheduled to start more than five weeks earlier on 13 March.
The production, marking Dolly’s fourth Broadway resurrection, will be directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, who has one Tony to his credit. Scott Rudin is producing. Further casting will come later.
The last Hello, Dolly! revival on Broadway closed in January, 1966 after 127 performances (including 11 previews) and starred the musical’s original Dolly, the uber-original Carol Channing. The show – with its delectable Jerry Herman score and bubbly book by Michael Stewart, based on the Thornton Wilder play The Matchmaker – first came to Broadway in 1964. That production eventually headlined a whole bevy of Dollies from Betty Grable and Ethel Merman to Pearl Bailey, in addition to the iconic Channing, and ran for 2,846 performances, including two previews (how things have changed, preview-wise!). Barbra Streisand claimed the role for the 1969 movie version.
Midler, whose career has been built primarily in concerts, films and recordings, was first seen on Broadway in 1967 as a replacement for Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel in the original production of Fiddler On the Roof. In 1974, she won a special Tony Award for ‘adding luster to the Broadway season’ with a series of concerts. Her last Broadway appearance was in 2013, when she portrayed the Hollywood super-agent Sue Mengers in the solo play I’ll Eat You Last. Her failure to garner a Tony nomination for that tour de force raised the hackles of her fans. I suspect she’ll make up for that snub quite nicely with Hello, Dolly!
Ron Cohen
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