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A new revival of the 1964 hit musical Hello, Dolly! is set to open on Broadway during the spring of 2017,
according to TheaterMania (theatermania.com). The production will star Bette
Midler as Dolly. All I have to say can be summed up in four words: It is about
time!
As for many of my generation, the Divine Miss M has been a
delightful fixture on the music and theater scenes over a lifetime. She captivated early on, in
the days when she was delighting gay audiences, accompanied on the piano by
Barry Manilow, at the Continental Baths in New York’s Ansonia Hotel, a period
that produced, in 1972, her first album, The
Divine Miss M. She memorialized that time in a later album, Bathhouse Betty, which was released in
1998. The Divine Miss M became a million-seller and earned her a Grammy Award as Best New Artist in
1973.
In 1979 Bette made her first movie, The Rose, and the title song will forever be associated with her.
Success followed success as albums, movies, and stage performances accumulated,
earning her numerous awards and a legion of devoted fans. I count myself as one of those fans, and now I’m
delighted that she will be tackling the role of Dolly in a musical that I have
enjoyed almost since it opened in 1964.
Hello, Dolly!,
with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on
Thornton Wilder’s 1938 farce, The
Merchant of Yonkers, which was retitled The
Matchmaker in 1955, opened on January 16, 1964, at the St. James Theatre.
It was David Merrick’s first show. Choreographed by Gower Champion, it starred
Carol Channing, who would make it a vehicle for her lifetime. She revived it in
the 1970s and again in the 1990s. I saw it during the latter period, when
Channing performed at the Indiana University Auditorium. However, much earlier I saw another touring production that began in 1965 and ran for two years and
nine months and saw two replacements for Channing over the course of the tour.
Eve Arden was one, and Dorothy Lamour, who gained fame in the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope road pictures of the 1940s. It was Lamour whom I saw when I was a college student in
Kansas in the late 1960s.
The Bette Midler production will be the fourth Broadway
revival of this iconic musical. I can hardly wait. It certainly seems to warrant a trip
the Big Apple in 2017.
