Mar. 07, 2008
SHOW REVIEW: Bette Midler ‘The Showgirl Must Go On’
Familiar Face: ‘Showgirl’ still in early stages, but Midler shines in time-honored routines
By MIKE WEATHERFORD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Bette Midler fashioned herself as 62 when she was half that age, playing the worldwise torch singer and crooning a past generation’s standards to rock ‘n’ roll long-hairs in the ’70s.
Now Midler really is 62; still timeless, still divine and … wishing she was 31?
“The Showgirl Must Go On,” the singer’s two-year commitment to the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, sometimes plays as if it’s trying too hard to make everyone happy, as though the star were stricken with a case of sudden self-consciousness about things that came naturally for years.
The new enterprise feels most comfortable when it’s most familiar, with Midler doing time-honored routines that leap traditional age divides just as easily as she switches from dirty jokes to luminous singing.
The new challenge is how to make the $10 million production fill its massive stage without losing the room-warming energy that radiates mostly from one person.
It’s perfectly understandable that the shakiest segment is not only the one that attempts to do something new, but also one that pulls the focus away from the star: the big, satiric production number built around Midler’s mermaid character Delores DeLago.
And it will surprise no one, or at least it shouldn’t, that the most touching moment is Midler sitting on the stage steps and strumming a ukulele to “The Glory Of Love.”
It’s harder to explain the star’s sudden camera-shyness, the weird contrast between the cheeky ad photos for “Showgirl” and the complete absence of video close-ups in the show. What’s up with seeing Simon Cowell and Elvis impersonator Tony Roi on the Colosseum’s giant high-def screen, but no Bette?
The peekaboo poster art could be chalked up to Midler’s camp aesthetic, given that nearly everyone knows what can be done with Photoshop these days. Is that really her naked body? Sorta, kinda, wink wink.
But those who file by the posters on the escalator to their second-balcony seats are sure to revolt against this misplaced modesty. And modesty is a trait most unbecoming to the Divine one, whose facial expressions help sell many an old Sophie Tucker joke.
But the Celine Dion folks also tried the same skimpy approach to video and later remedied it. It’s a reminder that “Showgirl” is still in the early stages. Toni Basil, Midler’s longtime choreographer, said the star keeps tinkering so much that once, on the final night of a limited run, they reinstated a number that had been cut just before the opening.
This bodes well for the tightening of Delores’ production number, which takes a funny idea — Wayne Newton summoning the mermaid to Vegas — and stretches it to nearly 20 minutes of padded, forced zaniness. The overstuffed approach begins with not just Newton but also the “American Idol” judges on the video screen.
Delores’ dreams of “O” turn into “Sunque du So Low” at the condemned Daze Inn. Her spirit is crushed until a pep talk from Elvis inspires a showgirls-on-wheel(chair)s revue, Busby Berkeley by way of “Murderball.” If it sounds funnier here than it plays onstage, it’s because I’m leaving out all the fish puns.
Basil and the costume designers have a more graceful touch paying tribute to classic Vegas floor shows. The 20 showgirls parade around with dollar signs on their heads during the title number, when Midler explains it was the “(boat)load of cash they’re payin’ me!” that lured her to the Strip.
A warm rendition of “Do You Want to Dance” leads to a rhythmic number with parasols that show off Basil’s eclectic influences while the star changes costumes. Midler’s “Oldest Showgirl in the World” routine creates a full-feathered finale that salutes the Copa Girls or revues such as “Folies Bergere.”
Perhaps wisely, considering the show follows Celine Dion’s “A New Day,” there’s not much production to distract from Midler’s serious singing. She delivers the slim rations of obligatory hits such as “The Rose” front and center with the 13-piece band, swirling barefoot for “From A Distance.” A projected image of a vintage New York skyline subtly underscores John Prine’s touching song about old age, “Hello In There.”
Midler’s singing was stronger on the show’s official opening night, Feb. 29, but she was funnier in an employee preview on Feb. 18. In true Johnny Carson form, the “saves” from fumbled jokes were funnier than the scripted versions delivered perfectly a week later.
Likewise, a story she told reporters at the postshow party — about the donkey seen in the opening video and its late “roommate” — brought more honest laughs than many of the scripted jokes; the written gags were less conspicuous back when longtime collaborator Bruce Vilanch had a lower profile.
All Midler seems to need is time to be herself, or at least the persona she’s created for herself. And that’s never been much of a problem.
Contact Mike Weatherford at 383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com.
Gay.com
First review: Bette in Vegas!
Robert Hilferty
Does it get any gayer?” Bette Midler asks more than 4,000 fans at the beginning of her new show, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” which runs for two years at Caesars Palace’s Colosseum in Las Vegas. In the wake of Celine Dion’s five-year run there, she’s specifically referring to the fact that, come May, she’ll be alternating shows with fellow gay icons Elton and Cher. Perhaps only those Atlantis cruises get gayer.
It’s hard to believe that the Divine Miss M is 62. She struts her stuff — which holds up pretty good in this $10 million extravaganza — almost as well as she did back when her legendary career was launched in New York’s Continental Baths. Nonetheless, age takes its toll and she peppers her swift, 90-minute vehicle with hilarious complaints, especially after strenuous numbers.
“How did Celine do this for five fuckin’ years?” she kvetches. “This is exhausting! If I had known, I would have asked for more money. Poor Cher. She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into!”
When you enter the massive theater, the first thing you see is a colossal high-definition LED screen, 34 by 109 feet, with a supple image of Bette against Monument Valley — yes, she’s a monument, too. It’s soon revealed to be a billboard on a desert highway, across which a tornado suddenly sweeps. This twister soon tears down the Strip, sweeping up everything from gamblers to Elvis imitators a la “The Wizard of Oz.” When the debris settles, we see onstage a pile of Louis Vuitton luggage. It spins slowly around to reveal a sassy, saucy Bette in silver sequins. The show ignites.
She promises “hits, glitz and spectacular tits,” and she delivers. She’s accompanied by the 18 Caesar Salad Girls and a busty backup trio, the Harlettes; scenic designer Michael Levine, from the opera world, creates curtains and trees from 75,000 gold coins. The show is a whirlwind tour of Bette’s best, alternating heartfelt performances of signature ballads from “The Rose” to “Wind Beneath My Wings” to bigger dance routines centering on her alter egos, Delores Delago and Soph.
Delago is the motorized wheelchair-bound mermaid whose career is flopping. She gets advice, on that massive screen, from Elvis and the “American Idol” judges (whose faces become funnily distorted at one point), and goes to Vegas, where she ends up in a dump performing an Esther Williams-like water routine called “Sunque de So Low.” Choreographer Toni Basil designs a Busby Berkeley pastiche, complete with overhead kaleidoscope projections.
Basil does a better job with Soph — Bette’s fast-talking, filthy-mouthed nonagenarian showgirl-who-can’t-stop, based on Sophie Tucker. Midler’s head is crowned with a 3,200-pound headdress of pink feathers, and the Caesar Salad choristers dazzle with endless configurations of pink feathers. But “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” deserved much more oomph, and the umbrella dance to “Do You Want To Dance?” was simply lame. Oh, well.
It would have been nice if Midler surprised us with something utterly new instead of treading tried-and-true territory. But, after all, that’s why people come to this, and this is what made her great. If you have the kind of money to buy a seat at the Colosseum, you should definitely place all bets on Bette. She’s one of a kind, and still kickin’ high.
San Fran Bay Journal
Bette Midler attacks Vegas
Takes no prisoners in her new show
by Robert Julian
Last Friday, Bette Midler officially opened her two-year, 200-show run at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and she hit the ground running. The 4,000-seat Coliseum was full of mature fans who’ve followed the diminutive diva for years, and knew pretty much what to expect from The Showgirl Must Go On. They got more than most bargained for.
First of all, there is the new Midler, who during the musical number “Pretty Legs (and Great Big Knockers)” casually alludes to having had “some work done” before opening this show. As one who sat in the front of the auditorium and met her after the show, up-close and personal, I can tell you it was more than a little work. I would guess it included a tummy tuck, breast reduction, and full face-lift. And it is, in my estimation, the best “work” I’ve ever seen. The slender Midler looks 20 years younger than her 62 years, and totally natural in appearance. And her youthful visage has its parallel in her stage performance.
Midler, the senior citizen, still cracks wise, but the nastiness that formerly characterized her dishing of co-stars and musical competitors like the late Karen Carpenter and Cher has vanished. Now she sends up herself, and her audience, in a kindler and gentler fashion. The Sophie jokes are still in the act, but she no longer mentions Sophie Tucker because, by now, no one remembers who Sophie Tucker was. Besides, Midler long ago made these vulgarities her own. Bruce Vilanch is listed in the show credits as one of the writers, and I can imagine his hand behind lines like, “Thirty years ago, my audiences used to be on drugs — now they’re on medications,” and a warning Midler gives to her audience: “There will be no seizures at Caesars tonight.”
Midler acknowledges that Showgirl is “basically the show I’ve been doing for the last 35 years,” and she is correct. It is now on steroids, with Midler, and the latest incarnation of her three singing “Harlettes,” backed up by 18 showgirls and a 13-piece band. Choreography is provided by Toni Basil of “Oh, Mickey” fame. The show opens with a sensational Spielbergian film clip involving a billboard for Midler’s show, a vulture, a burro, and a tornado that moves across the Nevada desert before striking the Las Vegas strip. Enter the diva, atop a stack of Vuitton luggage with the Harlettes serenading her with “Big Noise from Winnetka.” Midler informs the crowd she has arrived courtesy of “hormones and mood elevators,” and they should expect “glitz, hits, and tits.” She then proceeds to deliver on her promise.
The hits include “The Rose,” “From a Distance,” “Hello in There,” “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and “When a Man Loves a Woman.” The latter song Midler still delivers with passion and commitment, but she no longer ends it writhing around on the floor in high diva overdrive. The middle of Midler’s show centers around her infamous creation, Dolores Delago, the toast of Chicago. With sequined fishtails, she and all the women in her company flash glittering boobies from motorized wheelchairs while performing the songs Dolores brings to Vegas for her big debut. They include a medley of “Play that Funky Music, White Fish,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” and “Bad Fish” (sung to the tune of Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls”). It’s still corny, and it still works.
Midler is in good voice, and she still moves with agility. But her high heels are noticeably lower, her newly diminished ta-tas remain under wraps, and the bawdy, manic frenzy of her concerts from the 70s and early 80s is gone forever. Some hint of those days can be obtained from items being merchandized in the Bette boutique just outside the Coliseum. Fans can purchase the Showgirl program for $7.95, her old CDs, feather boas, or a line of soaps and shampoos marketed under the “Bathhouse Betty” label. But buyer beware: nothing is inexpensive in Vegas anymore. Tickets for Midler’s show range from $95 to sit in the top balcony to $250 for front orchestra seats.
For better or worse, Bette Midler is now an oldies act, and this is reflected not only in her material but in the crowd she draws. Her audience is white, middle-aged, affluent, and now primarily heterosexual. Yet the current middle-of-the-road version of the former kick-ass gay diva remains a hard-working professional and talented performer. In an era of Spears, Lohan, and Hilton, Midler gives old school a good name.
03/06/2008
The Los Angeles Times
The Movable Buffet: Dispatches from Las Vegas by Richard Abowitz
Midler’s middling show
03:25 PM PT, Mar 3 2008
On December 31, 1999, I was at the Mandalay Bay Events Center watching Bette Midler welcome in the new millennium. It was a show that was simply extraordinary for its old school, over-the-top Vegas entertainment value that has always been Midler’s calling card among divas. Midler calls herself “the people’s diva,” and by that she means that she offers a knowing and ironic wink to her audience in stalwart characters like Delores Delago alongside her larger-than-life, manically self-centered “Divine Miss M” stage presence. So, the possibilities of what Midler could create here as a permanent Vegas show with a reported budget of $10 million was legitimately exciting.
But “The Showgirl Must Go On” is not Midler exploding her palette with a show whose outrageousness marks a culmination of her career efforts. Rather, “The Showgirl Must Go On” turns out to be a perfect title for an obligatory and mindlessly predictable super-sized version of a Bette Midler touring concert: a pastiche of the ballads and scripted routines that have worked for her in the past, with some Vegas touches added, including overlong shtick bits on Elvis and Wayne Newton. “The Showgirl Must Go On” offers nothing that will surprise longtime Midler fans, and, with the cheap seats going for $95, it is hard to imagine the appeal for the casual fan.
Photo: Ethan Miller
Be careful of the cheaper seats at the Colosseum for Midler’s show too. If you are going to see Midler, get good seats. Unlike Celine Dion, Midler does not have her image up on the massive screen behind her on stage; and so the diva, in the words of one longtime fan in the nosebleed seats, was merely speck-tacular from there.
Also, unlike the immaculate Celine Dion, Midler’s voice flattens out on a few notes; but to me, anyway, there was something wonderfully human about that. The more serious problem was Midler’s choreography, though it was far more demanding than her predecessor’s act; the effort is just not rewarded. Toni Basil’s choreography for Midler is one of the most noticeably average aspects of the show. Basil features lots of chorus lines and big finishes that are thoroughly predictable long before they reach the BIG finish.
Fortunately, Midler is confident enough to ratchet down the visual circus on the big ballads, offering “The Rose” and “Hello in There” with all of the spotlight attention focused on her voice. The contrast creates goose-bump moments for fans, greater than a stage full of showgirls with $-sign headdresses (or Midler’s own attempt at the world’s largest headdress). Midler is still capable of seeming moved by her old hits, and she projects that emotion and feeling into the audience.
“The Showgirl Must Go On” is not a failure or unenjoyable. The grab-bag approach of this show is disappointing only if you expected something truly original and breathtaking and fun, not to mention fresh — which may be unreasonable for an artist working through her fourth decade as an entertainer. But that is what I expected from Midler, based on her amazing 1999 show in Vegas. Instead, “The Showgirl Must Go On” is a familiar but inferior version of that earlier evening.
Theatremania
Bette Midler:The Showgirl Must Go On
Reviewed By: Jonas Schwartz · Mar 3, 2008 · Las Vegas
To call Bette Midler divine is like minimizing the Taj Mahal as a quaint cottage. However, her new show at Caesars Palace, The Showgirl Must Go On, lacks innovation, making much of the evening feel like a re-run for the star’s fans.
The show begins with a kitschy opening sequence where a twister sweeps up everything in its path and lands 2,200 pounds of Louis Viutton luggage on the massive Coliseum stage. The Divine Miss M emerges from the luggage in great spirits, wearing a saucy silver pant suit.
Vocally, Midler is in top form, remaining the breathy, raspy goddess she’s been for decades. She sings several of her favorite tunes, including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “In The Mood.” And when she strips away the shtick to focus on a ballad like “When A Man Loves A Woman” or her signature song “Wind Beneath My Wings,” — aided by the fine 13-piece band led by Bette Sussman — she commands the house. Her Sophie Tucker routine, though familiar territory, still emerges as an oldie but goodie.
Yet one of her early jokes is telling in how often the show’s humor doesn’t succeed. “30 years ago my audience was on drugs. Now they’re on medication.” Who wants Bette Midler for the AARP generation? One of the numbers that falters most features her mermaid lounge singer character, Delores Delago; it includes a tired American Idol spoof and a Busby Berkeley routine that would have been more at home on Donny and Marie than at Caesars in the new millennium. One half expects Rip Taylor and Paul Lynde to pop out for some quips.
Designers Carol Dodds and Michael Levine conjure up some lovely visuals, aided by a massive video screen. For example, Midler sings the touching “Hello In There” amidst multi-layered scrim projections of vintage New York engulfed by fog. The gold coin curtains also become a character in the show, forming objects such as trees, clouds, and rain for several numbers. Costume designer Constance Hoffman has crafted some eye-popping outfits, including reversible clothing that gives the illusion that Midler’s back-up singers — here dubbed the Caesar Salad — clad in black have instantly exploded into bright floral colors.
Any opportunity to see Bette Midler should not be missed. It’s just a shame that she wasn’t packaged in a show more worthy of her talents.
Source: Click Here
Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On
(The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas; 4,296 seats; $250 top) Presented by AEG Live. Musical director, Bette Sussman. Opened Feb. 20, 2008; reviewed Feb. 29.
Band: Sussman, Tony Barney, Sonny Emory, Taku Hirano, Wayne Johnson, Mike Miller, Darrell Smith, Shayna Steele, Danny Falcone, Gil Kaupp, Robert Mader, Gerald Merra, Nathan Tanouye, Phil Wigfall. The Harlettes: Jordan Ballard, Kyra DCosta, Kamilah Marshall.
By PHIL GALLO
The biggest and most glamorous revue of Bette Midler’s career, bankrolled at $10 million, makes her 30-plus years of fully realized shows appear to be opening acts on the road to this extravaganza. “The Showgirl Must Go On” is a razzle-dazzle spectacular with a backbone, a journey through Midler’s own windy past that’s as humorous as it is musically sound. She has a taken a path wholly different from her showroom predecessor Celine Dion and current bunkmate Elton John, choosing to play out her own greatest hits and bits and increase the wattage on the sparkles rather than create a truly Vegas-only destination show.
The revue, which includes only one new tune (the title piece), extends the concept of greatest hits to include not just songs but routines and characters from her past — Soph, the ancient showgirl based on Sophie Tucker, and her dirty jokes; singing mermaid Dolores Delago; and, of course, the rapid-fire exchanges with backing trio the Harlettes. She takes direct shots at other performers — Dion and Cirque du Soleil included — and a nice indirect one after just a few songs: “I’m exhausted. That’s what happens when you do your own singing.”
She touts herself as “the people’s diva”: The language and humor are salty, but the music relies on extreme familiarity, making the evening safe for consumption by the mature masses — “The Rose,” “From a Distance,” “In the Mood,” a medley of hits by Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra that includes “Viva Las Vegas” and “My Way.” These are musical high points, which makes the closer, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” obvious and anti-climatic. The act needs an encore that sends the audience back into the casino in high spirits.
Window dressing is everywhere, from a forest scene behind her on a sweetly inspirational “From a Distance” to the rundown Dazed Inn hotel where her Delago character is booked, and it neither consumes her nor forces her to go over the top. Delago, who scoots around the stage in a motorized wheelchair along with a dozen other mermaids, is responsible for the show’s camp factor; it’s the one segment lacking a pinpoint focus.
Midler makes a heartfelt connection with her Divine Miss M days. Glen Miller’s “In the Mood” and the Andrews Sisters hit “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” are the evening’s G-rated fun, bubbly numbers that were quaint bits of nostalgia when she revived them amid the singer-songwriter deluge of the early ’70s. They play as ageless classics now.
That era is also represented in “Showgirl” by a ballad interpretation of “Do You Wanna Dance” and an expertly controlled reading of John Prine’s haunting look at aging “Hello in There.” Her sparse original of “Dance” was fraught with vulnerability and a whiff of desperation; with the tempo unchanged and arrangement fleshed out, Midler transforms it into a festive number without losing the unique touch she had on her 1972 recording. It’s a rare occurrence in which a piece of music has been given the Vegas treatment and retained its integrity.
Beyond Midler’s top-shelf vocal perf, the arrangements superbly emphasize the singer, the costumes of Constance Hoffman are delicious eye candy, and the Caesar Salad Girls dance troupe executes Toni Basil’s choreography with impeccable precision. It’s a big stage — 120 feet long - and the 18 hoofers fill it admirably, especially on a wild number that connects pre-war German cabaret with a pre-Castro Havana nightclub act. When the onstage action is reduced to Midler, or Midler and just the Harlettes, it likely takes the air out of the room for the folks in the cheaper seats; the enormity of the production is a beast that needs to be continually fed. Elton John excelled at it; Dion learned it over time; Cher, if she just executes her arena act, already has a handle on it.
Show’s weakness, oddly enough, is John’s strength: the gigantic video screen behind the stage. Set pieces are attractive — the desert, a forest, raindrops — but only one truly impresses, a multilayered black & white aerial view of 1940s New York. Filmed bits involving the “American Idol” judges and an Elvis impersonator go on far too long. Considering how the films made John’s “Red Piano” magical, it’s a missed opportunity here for Midler that, perhaps, can be rethought down the road.
Broadway World
he Best Bette in Las Vegas
by Ellen Sterling
The lights on the Las Vegas Strip are now brighter because Bette Midler is here. Her new show, The Showgirl Must Go On opened for press at the Colesseum at Caesars Palace on February 29, a few days after the official opening night with all it’s red carpet madness and — having waited for this night since it was announced in May that she’ll be here for 100 performances this year — it is a joy to tell you it was worth the wait.
Her entrance, following a CGI storm and tornado, has her arriving in Las Vegas, climbing down her immense pile of “carry-on” luggage. Preceded by her wonderful Harlettes along with her 18 Caesar Salad Girls — her showgirls — Midler opens with the new show’s title song, during which she notes she is “the people’s diva” who is as she appears “because of a precise combination of hormones and mood elevators.” The night, she promises, will be full of “hits, glitz and spectacular tits.”
And so it was.
All the songs were there, from “In the Mood” right through the finale, “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” Following the opening number there was really nothing new, but no matter. When Midler is the singer, the material is always fresh. And it’s lots more than the signing people come to hear. The audience went wild for her comments and basked in the incandescence of her personality.
Finishing the opening number, she said, “I’m exhausted. That’s what happens when you do your own singing.” (Cher will be alternating with her beginning in May and Elton John will also be there for several dates, leading to her observation, “Elton, Cher and me. It doesn’t get any gayer.”) Welcoming the audience, she singled out her “tribe,” her “gays” and everyone else and noted, “30 years ago the audience was on drugs. Now they’re on medication.”
Midler held a “community sing” with “The Rose” but, later in the evening said, “I know you [the audience] like to sing along. Don’t.”
Delores Delago naturally showed up, encouraged by the “American Idol” judges, Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell as well as Wayne Newton and Elvis. Delores’ show at the “Daze Inn” in Las Vegas was a “Sunque du So Low” production and it lived up to its name. This was the only part of the evening that was a bit of a drag. It could have been shorter.
Soph, the world’s oldest showgirl, was there, too. It’s a beautiful set piece ending with a haunting “Glory of Love.”
On the whole, The Showgirl Must Go On is an overwhelmingly glorious entertainment that seems to pass in a nanosecond.
The impressive talents of the production staff deserve a great deal of credit. Toni Basil’s choreography, Constance Hoffman’s costumes, Michael Levine’s sets, Carol Dodds’ video production — all contributed mightily to the evening.
Musical director Bette Sussman’s orchestra (including the six-piece Fat City Brass that she plucked from a lounge at the Palms) was terrific.
It must be noted that the Colesseum at Caesars Palace is a very beautiful, but very difficult venue. Built for Céline Dion in 2003, the theater holds 4,000 seats. The stage is 120 feet wide and 44 feet high. When it opened, a local paper pointed out that it is the size of “a hefty 40-yard field goal in football.” Dion had a huge Dragone-designed production that was so large the star herself often seemed lost. And, when he is in residence, Elton John complains vociferously and constantly about the size of the stage. Not so with Midler. Although Céline has a good six inches in height on her, Miss M owned that stage for each of the 90 minutes of her show.
The audience rightly loved every second.
The Showgirl Must Go On is spectacular and Bette Midler is one of the wonders of the world. Ticket prices are comparatively steep, topping out at $275.90, including taxes and fees, but the show is worth it.
Lots of performers have come and gone in Las Vegas over the years. But Bette Midler is the real deal. During the show she sings, “Las Vegas is my kind of town.” It is, and she now owns it. Don’t miss her.
The Showgirl Must Go On is performed Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 PM. Tickets available online at www.caesarspalace.com
March 1, 2008
NEW YORK TIMES
Theater Review
Vulgarity Becomes Perfectly Wholesome
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
LAS VEGAS, March 1 — Just what this city desperately needed: a bracing injection of vulgarity!
Bette Midler, the entertainer who ignited a career by giving a good name to bad taste, has arrived in this sprawling gambling mecca, a steroidal temple of tastelessness. And she claims to be right at home.
For as she merrily boasts in her new extravaganza, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” Ms. Midler has been telling dirty jokes for three decades, and flashed her flesh way back in the day. (Not for the paparazzi either, like these crazy kids today, but for paying audiences, thank you very much.) Sin city, antiseptic and corporate though it mostly feels today, is her kinda town.
Ms. Midler has lost little of the verve, bawdiness and originality that first captivated gay audiences back in the early 1970’s. That hip-wiggling strut — how many entertainers can be said to have a trademark walk, by the way? — is every bit as manic, even if the heels are a tad lower. The voice still throbs with palpable feeling, even when the sentiment would sound ersatz as sung by almost any other performer.
But Ms. Midler’s movie career has brought her a wide audience, and the culture has happily embraced all that once seemed transgressive in her act. By the standards of today, her winking brand of vulgarity — the old-school Sophie Tucker gags, the jubilant camping — seems positively wholesome.
So it is that Ms. Midler is now installed in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, where Celine Dion recently held court for a five-year stint. She has moved in with her own $10 million spectacular, playing five nights a week for a total of about 100 performances a year for two years. Beginning in May, Cher will alternate with her in this cavernous space of more than 4,000 seats, where Elton John is also currently in residence. Noting the common appeal of this showbiz trinity, Ms. Midler quipped, “Does it get any gayer?” Well, possibly — O Barbra where art thou?
Is it a little dismaying for longtime fans of this singular performer to find her installed in Las Vegas as the latest luxury product for high rollers in a city awash in them? (Ticket prices top out at $250, which could also buy dinner for one at Guy Savoy in the same hotel.) Well, possibly. And “The Showgirl Must Go On,” a career survey offering a sort of Midler 101, is clearly aimed at the masses that flock to the city in stupefying numbers in fervid search of ways to get rid of their money.
In a speedy 90 minutes (apparently the maximum amount of time audiences here will agree to be entertained away from the slots and tables), and backed by a strong 13-piece band, Ms. Midler performs virtually all her hits and signature tunes. She sings with a polish — and in a few cases, an emotional intensity — that belies the passing of the years and the many occasions on which she has been called upon to perform them before. Now 62, Ms. Midler makes self-pitying sport of her supposed infirmity in the course of her dash through her songbook, but when the encore arrives — the inexorable, the inevitable, dare I say the infernal “Wind Beneath My Wings” — Ms. Midler hits all the notes with breath to spare.
After a somewhat uninspired entrance — the diva ascends from under center stage atop a massive pile of Louis Vuitton luggage — Ms. Midler, trim in a silver sequined pantsuit, her hair a nimbus of tight blonde curls, hurls herself into high gear to perform the blazingly funny title song, a new composition that pays witty homage to that great Las Vegas institution of the title.
Racing back and forth across the truly colossal Colosseum stage (it is 120 feet wide), Ms. Midler showers the audience in tart patter — she laments that she’s got an adjustable rate mortgage on the place — and introduces her latest trio of backup singers, the Harlettes (2.0? 3.0? 12.0?), and the 20 leggy chorines who in turn back them up. “The best thing is, not one of them is a French-Canadian circus performer!” she exults, referring to the ubiquity of the Cirque du Soleil brand in the city.
Interspersed with performances of all her standards — from “In the Mood” to “From a Distance,” from “Hello in There” to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” — are affectionate nods to entertainers associated with Las Vegas. The city was once a refuge for the oddballs and also-rans of showbiz, so Delores DeLago, the wheelchair-riding mermaid with the odoriferous lounge act, is naturally right at home. She is introduced, via video, by the solons of “American Idol,” and sings a medley of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra hits. Soph, the naughty jokemistress modeled on Sophie Tucker, is reimagined here as an indomitable showgirl, encumbered by a headdress “half the size of Tennessee,” in another standout segment.
Ms. Midler’s outsized persona — the Divinity thing — serves her well here. Staging a show of this kind on a long, narrow strip of stage must be like putting on a Broadway show on a subway platform. The strain sometimes shows; even 20 leggy girls isn’t quite enough to eat up the space, and the choreography by Toni Basil, delightful in the Soph-and-the-showgirls segment, flounders at other points. The set designs, by the opera veteran Michael Levine, are dominated by a series of shimmering curtains of gold coins that pays elegant homage to the tradition of Vegas glitz. But there’s no escaping the flattening influence of the giant video screen that looms over the stage, and makes the space feel a bit like a supersized Imax theater.
That Ms. Midler is capable of instantly warming up a room this daunting, and filling a stage this forbidding, is a testament to her consummate skills as an entertainer. The temperature dips now and then, but she keeps the antiseptic at bay with regular infusions of the down-and-dirty earthiness that is so central to her appeal.
Flinging herself on her back at one point, in mock exhaustion, she crankily observes that her predecessor “must have been a robot.” Having seen Ms. Dion’s show, I can attest to the perspicacity of that assessment. (Obviously it is meant to be a joke.)
Nobody leaving “The Showgirl Must Go On” will confuse Ms. Midler with a mechanical contraption. She still tears into the soulful ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman,” to cite just one example, with a fierceness that excavates every ounce of pain from it. Like all great showgirls, she may wear sequins like a second skin, but the woman underneath is all flesh and blood, humor and heart.
The Las Vegas Sun
The girl’s great, but the rest of the show …
Even in Vegas, there’s such a thing as too much
Sun, Mar 2, 2008 (2 a.m.)
By Joe Brown
IF YOU GO
- What: “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On”
- Where: The Colosseum at Caesars Palace
-
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday
- Admission: $95, $140, $175 and $250; (877) 723-8836, www.ticketmaster.com
Bette Midler built her four-decade career on famously never needing padding. So why has she stuffed her Las Vegas revue with so much filler? There’s a solid 45-minute concert at the heart of her revue, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” which opened Friday at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. And Midler is clearly giving it her all up there. But the gems in this dream set are swaddled and obscured by too much sparkly stuff.
Heavily hyped, highly anticipated, Midler’s “Showgirl” is the great bright hope of the Strip. Will it become a destination attraction like its unprecedented predecessor? Can it fill 4,300 seats five nights a week for two years; bring in the international, intergenerational crowds; rescue the economy?
A buffet-style show that serves up all the favorites any card-carrying member of Les Midlerables would care to hear, it puts more than enough eye- and ear-candy on the Colosseum stage. An affectionate valentine to vaudeville and girlie shows and ghosts of Vegas past, it’s tightly scripted and a bit rushed: Midler and the audience step aboard for the ride, which lets us all out in the gift shop.
After a windy widescreen “overture” that depicts Midler literally blowing Vegas away, the star rises from the stage atop a mountain of steamer trunks.
“And that’s just the carry-ons!” she crows. And we’re off.
At 62, she looks sensational and sounds swell. Midler starts strong and snappy with a five-song run of the good stuff, getting the crowd “In the Mood” with sass, swing and her trademarked stutter-stagger-step.
“I feel like turning this place into the biggest karaoke bar in the world,” Midler beams, and the audience gratefully sings right along with her. There’s a collective sigh and swoon as she stands in a scarlet spotlight and unfurls “The Rose,” and a hankies-out moment when Midler (barefoot in a tangerine goddess gown, against a sun-dappled forest backdrop) delivers “From a Distance,” another of her mother-of-us-all Big Ballads.
Later we’re treated to a chain of charmingly dusty, dirty jokes a la Sophie Tucker. And the evening’s most joyous moment arrives with the brassy blast of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and the adorable apparition of early-’70s “Miss M” — in triplicate! — on the big video screen.
“Showgirl” hits a snag — more like an iceberg — about a half-hour in, at the shticky centerpiece. Midler brings back long-ago concert staple Delores Delago — a washed-up mermaid showgirl who croons and careens in a wheelchair — and plops her into a Vegas-centric fantasia saddled by a drawn-out nod to “American Idol,” a parody medley of ’70s hits barnacled with fishy puns, and (ugh) an Elvis impersonator on the big screen.
Cleverly choreographed by Toni Basil — wheelchairs a-whizzing, tails flipping — the routine is capped with a sight gag on the kicky, kaleidoscope precision of the ’50s-era June Taylor Dancers. But Midler overestimates the appeal of the character, and at nearly 30 minutes, what should be a bit eats up almost a third of the show — time which could be spent, well, singing. Let’s hope she gives Delago the hook, or at least fillets this segment considerably.
Midler is immediately back in heart-rending form with “Hello in There,” a lament for lonely old people.
She stops — and probably should end the show — with a wall-to-wall, all-stops-out, definitive rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
And in a particularly sweet moment, she perches at the edge of the stage and gently croons “The Glory of Love,” softly strumming a pink, crystal-encrusted ukulele (you can buy one next door at the Bette Midler boutique for $2,500).
It’s in these precious moments, when Midler steps out, stands still and simply sings that this “Showgirl” truly delivers. Her audience is hungry to look at her, hear her, be with her.
Never a conventionally “pretty singer,” Midler at her best is a singing actor, an expressive interpreter, all persona. America’s Edith Piaf. Funny and touching, she commands the stage with such absolute ease that it’s hard to figure out why she agreed to all the distracting frippery.
No one would begrudge the star a breather between bouts of belting. And every showgirl needs time for a costume change (or six). But the pretty-enough entr’actes — delicate umbrella dances and frothy feather displays — seem beside the point.
It all leaves this all-purpose entertainer and her troupe trying hard — too hard — to fill the Colosseum’s vast, 120-foot expanse of a stage. “If I cross this stage one more time, I’ll have a stroke,” she cracks breathlessly. “The showgirl must sit down,” she pants soon after.
Midler makes repeated mention of the $10 million cost of the “Showgirl” production. An alternative title for this show might be “The Dancing Curtains with Bette Midler”: The show’s signature look is sweeping, shifting swaths of shimmering, glimmering strands, screens and scrims.
It’s as if someone said, “We’ve got all this fancy machinery, we’d better use it.”
But the more stuff they throw up there above and behind and around Midler — the 20 lovely but generic showgirls, the CinemaScope scenery — the smaller she appears. Midler is one of the few remaining performers who doesn’t need effects and extras. We can get that stuff anywhere.
Here’s hoping this “Showgirl” gets her act together and goes on for a good long time.
For the original article: Click Here
Time Magazine
Friday, Feb. 29, 2008
Bette Midler Takes Vegas, Leaves Bathhouse
By Richard Corliss
The huge screen on the Caesars Palace stage reveals a Nevada billboard bearing a poster of Bette Midler. She’s posed in a cute blue dress with a short skirt that shows off her indestructibly fabulous gams; her smile is so electric it could light every casino on the Strip. A donkey wanders past, seemingly unimpressed, as, in the distance, a storm gathers strength. It morphs into a tornado, sending croupiers and chorines whizzing across the skyscape like Miss Gulch over Kansas. The door to an airborne Port-A-Potty swings open and an Elvis impersonator falls out. Now the video images give way to a crowd of real people on stage: three backup singers (the Staggering Harlettes) and 18 dancers. This is Vegas, baby. And riding in on that donkey, live and in person, all 5′1″ of her, is the Divine Miss M. “Boy,” she exclaims, in full twinkle, “is my ass tired!”
PhotoShop: BaltoBoy Steve
She will be by the end of The Showgirl Must Go On, a 90-min. workout session that officially opens tonight and will play five times a week, 20 weeks a year. The other two headliners who will sport on the Coliseum stage when Bette’s resting will be Elton John and Cher. “Me, Elton and Cher,” she says of Caesar’s year-round headliners, as a 1975 photo of the three flashes on the rear screen. “Does it get any gayer?”
Midler has come a long way since she was the gay guys’ pin-up girl at the Continental Baths in Manhattan. She’s 62 now, and her fans have matured with her. “Thirty years ago my audiences were on drugs,” she confides. “Now they’re on medication.” Frequently she complains that she hasn’t got the old energy. “Omigod I’m exhausted!” she apostrophizes after her very first number — adding, in re certain pop-star lip-synchers who’ve played the Strip, “That’s what happens when you do your own songs.”
Bette’s show follows the five-year run of Celine Dion’s A New Day. That elephantine extravaganza, staged by ex-Cirque du Soleil director Franco Dragone, submerged the singer in gigantic sets and CGI effusions: rolling clouds, meteor showers, shooting stars. Midler jokes that she has come to “the only city that could teach Kraft about cheese” because of “the sh-tload of money they’re payin’ me.” There’s plenty of money lavished on the production too: $10 million (as she mentions three or four times during the evening), and it boasts some luscious videographic effects. Oh, and Midler does make an appearance wreathed in a 3200-lb. headdress of pink feathers. But Showgirl, written by Eric Kornfeld and Bruce Vilanch, and choreographed by Toni Basil, keeps its focus on the star. It’s a big satin pillow for her outsize talents to cuddle up in.
“We’re gonna take you where you’ve never been,” the star announces. Is that a promise or a threat? Actually, she’s gonna take you back to all the old familiar places: to clips of early Bette singing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” as current Bette performs the same steps; to the mermaid chanteuse Dolores Delago, flapping her fin tail as she zips across the stage in a motorized wheelchair; to the ’70s anthem “Pretty Legs and Great Big Knockers,” its brass and sass intact; to reprises of the signature ballads “The Rose,” “The Wind Beneath My Wings” and (the unnecessary but apparently mandatory) “From a Distance.” These are signposts of the part of the country her fans call home: Midler America. That’s what keeps ‘em comin’ back for more.
The songs, the nonstop snazz and of course the bawdry — or, as she puts it, “hits, glitz and tremendous tits.” Innuendo goes out the window when Miss M. comes to town. The clerk at the ticket desk offers the friendly warning that this is “adult entertainment,” and inside you’ll hear Midler caution the crowd, “Please don’t call the Pope if you see a tit or two.” You won’t have to phone Rome; skinwise, the show is pretty chaste. Bette relies on one of her longtime characters — Soph (for Sophie Tucker), the oldest babe in show business — to supply the raunch dressing. “My tits have fallen so far South they’re speakin’ Spanish,” Soph confesses before telling a few ribald classics. Since this is a family website, I’ll withhold the punch lines and tease you with a couple of the setups: “If I’d know you were a virgin I would’ve been gentler.” And “Have you ever been picked up by the fuzz?” (Cappers and rim shots available upon written request.)
The big set piece has Dolores Delago dreaming that she is getting career counsel from the American Idol judges (their faces rendered in increasingly distorted funhouse images). “You should be in Vegas,” Simon says. But when she gets there, ready to star in her classy aquatic revue, she finds she’s not booked at Cirque du Soleil but at a Daze Inn motel where the water attraction is called Sunque du So Low. Ever the trouper, Dolores dons Elvis cape and shades and belts out “Viva Las Vegas,” “It’s Now or Never”and “My Way.” So she’s performing in the motel pool; so lightning strikes her. The lady is fulfilling her destiny: she’s in the business she calls show.
The real Bette Midler, chantootsie extraordinaire, got the crowd to sing along with “The Rose” while waving their cell phones like cigarette lighters at a ’60s concert. Still, she’s at her best not so much in the pop ballads that gave her mid-career a Top 40 lift, as in a plaintive ballad like John Prine’s “Hello in There,” or her rave-up of “When a Man Loves a Woman.” They’re terrific songs, and prove the lady’s still got the lung power. (Does she take requests? Please, then, an encore of her late-70s gut-destroyer “Stay With Me.”)
As Soph, Midler passes along some folk wisdom for the business that we call show: “Find your light. They can’t love you if they don’t see you.” Bette has been radiating that light for nearly four decades; you’d think she’d be worn out by now. But The Showgirl Must Go On displays the sexy sexagenarian at the top of her form. There’s simply no one who can match Midler as a full-service mesmerizer — all-singing, all-talking, all heart and soul. Here’s a sure thing for high rollers: Go to Vegas, and bet on Bette.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Midler unleashes her ‘most divine divine’ Print
Randy Lewis - LOS ANGELES TIMES
LAS VEGAS — Bette Midler is brash, funny, schmaltzy, surprising, poignant, charming, provocative, witty, bawdy and, of course, divine. She knows where Hollywood keeps its skeletons, and she’s not afraid to throw open closet doors and drag out what she finds within. She’s an absolute master of the stinging put-down, she can belt a big, brassy ballad second to none, do a bit of hoofing and is a former Academy Award nominee to boot.
So how come nobody ever got Miss M to host the Oscars?
What seems like a match made in heaven remains, at least until Gilbert Cates wises up and drafts her, Hollywood’s loss. And now it’s Sin City’s gain.
Sunday, Midler thanked the capacity crowd “for TiVo-ing the Oscars tonight so you could be here” at the fourth night of her new gig at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.
She’s jumping in with both flippers for a two-year stint in the spot vacated in December by Celine Dion, and for the 4,300-capacity theater, it’s truly going to be a whole new day.
Her 90-minute revue, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” doesn’t differ significantly from her concert act — she covers her hits and gives generous chunks of time to her two main alter egos: Dolores Delago, the wheelchair-propelled singing mermaid, and the deliciously ribald Soph, the world’s oldest showgirl.
But as with everything in Vegas in general and Caesars Palace in particular, it’s now much bigger, shinier and even more over the top, as you’d expect with a reported $10 million budget.
“It’s my most divine divine yet,” she said at the outset. “I’m a … goddess!” a statement that neatly crystallizes the merger of spiritual and temporal that makes Midler’s performances such a delight.
Her entree into Vegas culture seems like a no-brainer. Yet alongside the kind of shows that have come to dominate the Strip’s entertainment scene, such as multiple Cirque du Soleil stagings and their clones (”La Reve”) as well as Blue Man Group and baby boomer-minded musicals (”Spamalot”), Midler’s revue is a high-energy celebration of, and return to, classic American stage performance.
Although she launched her career in the 1970s, she’s always relied heavily on pre-rock traditions: vaudeville-style performance, Borscht Belt comedy and Vegas kitsch, all informed with a liberating rock ‘n’ roll attitude.
What she pulls off so skillfully is a yin-yang juxtaposition of low comedy and high art.
In her extended, characteristically outrageous skit as Delago, she’s now flanked not just by her three deliberately trashy Harlettes backup singers but also by 18 more dancers in the same regalia and matching wheelchairs. (She introduced the chorus line as “the Caesar Salad Girls” and advised “the best thing is that not one of them is a French-Canadian circus performer!”)
With hardly a breath after that bit concluded, she reappeared in a simple black dress. Standing behind a scrim with black-and-white images of a decaying big city, she sang John Prine’s exquisite portrait of the loneliness that can accompany old age, “Hello in There,” which she originally recorded in 1972.
She devoted more time to outrageous humor than musical drama and often jabbed at Vegas conventions, throwing zingers at Toni Braxton’s hotel-sized image across the street from Caesars and doing bits with Wayne Newton (his voice, anyway) and Elvis (a not-so-incredible simulation). And noting that the new rotation of big-name talent at the Colosseum (where she plays through March, then takes a break before resuming in June) includes her friends Cher and Elton John, she quipped, “Could it get any gayer?”
Still, with each straightforward song, mostly outwardly syrupy ballads such as “The Rose” and “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” Midler extracted something more than what’s inherent in each and provided the substance that prevented the lighter bits from turning the show completely frivolous.
She transformed Julie Gold’s “From a Distance” into something beyond a plea for everyone on Earth to just get along. In its “Imagine”-like wish for a better world, Midler hit the final word in a line about singing “songs of peace” with a force that decisively drove the political point home. Then she emphasized the spiritual dimension in the yearning-cautionary tone she brought to the lyric “God is watching us” — dimensions you don’t expect in a Vegas show.
The 14-piece band, led by musical director Bette Sussman, followed her adroitly from the understated balladry of “Hello in There” to the big-band swing of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
There were surprisingly few opening-week glitches — a faulty parasol in one number, a recalcitrant wind sock in another. The set list isn’t flawless yet; her use of Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” makes a problematic lyric even trickier as sung from a woman’s perspective. There are a dozen other choices she could make to demonstrate her credibility in a classic soul ballad.
But befitting her self-description as “the people’s diva,” Midler didn’t spend much time fretting the little stuff or trying to conceal how much effort goes into anchoring a show like hers. “If I have to cross this stage once more,” she said, huffing and puffing her way across its 200-foot expanse, “I’m going to have a stroke!”
Despite the great shape she seems to have gotten her 62-year-old body into for this adventure, she wasn’t entirely kidding. In contrast to the all-around perfectionism of a Celine-style diva, by letting the seams show Midler becomes that much more human. And the more human she seems, the more truly divine she is.
Las Vegas Logue
Bette Midler Opens at Caesars Palace
Posted By Michelle Snow On February 21, 2008 @ 9:58 pm In Las Vegas Shows
Last night (Feb 20), Bette Midler officially opened her new run as headliner at Caesars Palace and it was an celeb-studded evening full of rave reviews.
Flaunting plenty of gags, and a wealth of hits, Midler’s “The Showgirl Must Go On” extravaganza features some of the singer’s favorite characters, from the wheelchair-bound mermaid Delores Delago to Soph, the oldest living showgirl in Vegas, all set against a backdrop that resembles a Broadway-style theater. And there is plenty of glitz and glam in everything from the set to the Divine Miss M herself.
“I’ve been hoarding feathers and fans and sequins and rhinestones for the last 50 years and, hey, I’m throwing ‘em all on stage,” she joked.
She is joined onstage by a trio of backup singers (Jordan Ballard, Kyra Dacosta and Kamilah Martin) known as the Harlettes, a 13-piece band-— which includes a six-piece horn section from the Las Vegas band “The Fat City Horns” — and 20 female dancers, who tackle the lively and energetic choreography created by the legendary Toni Basil (of “Mickey” fame).
On hand to take in the first night of was a crowd that included N’SYNC’s Lance Bass & Joey Fatone, Taye Diggs, Christine Ebersole, Jennifer Coolidge, Nathan Burton, Ricki Lake, Idina Menzel, Siegfried & Roy, Rita Rudner, Meatloaf, Toni Basil, and Alan Thicke. Post-show, Midler and her daughter Sophie stolled through the lobby (with bodyguards, of course) to cheers from those on the gambling floor to Pure Nightclub, which had some excitement of its own earlier in the day. At Pure, the Divine Miss M and her closest friends continued the grand opening celebrations until the wee hours.
So it’s now official…Caesars Palace is now the only place on the Strip where you can not only make a bet, but also enjoy a night of Bette, all in the same place.Tickets for “The Showgirl Must Go On” are on sale now and can be purchased by calling 1.877.7BETTEM (723-8836) or logging on to www.ticketmaster.com, keyword “Bette Midler”. Tickets may also be purchased in person at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace Box Office, which is open daily from 10am to 10pm. Ticket prices are $95, $140, $175, and $250.
Bette Midler will perform her show five nights per week at 7:30pm, with the show dark on Mondays and Thursdays. Whe she takes longer breaks, the stage time will be split between Elton John and newly signed Cher, who is readying her first show for Caesars Palace, starting May 6.
Hail to Caesars! Bette Midler hits the jackpot with her $10M revue
BY JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ
Friday, February 22nd 2008, 4:00 AM
Bette Midler’s ‘Showgirl’ combines concert and Broadway-style costumes and stage effects.
In New York City, Bette Midler is revered for restoring neglected public parks. In Las Vegas, she’s something else - and that’s an understatement.
On Wednesday night, the Divine Miss M launched her latest extravaganza, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” and she was brassy and raunchy as ever.
The 90-minute show takes off with a “Wizard of Oz”-like film clip in which a swirling tornado tears through the desert and down the Vegas strip, sweeping up everything in its path, including Bette on a billboard and a bug-eyed burro. The twister crashes into the Colosseum in Caesars Palace, where Midler emerges on the donkey and opens the show with a cheeky quip: “Boy, is my ass tired.”
A trim and sexy 62-year-old Midler told the crowd of nearly 4,300 to “Get a load of me” and to expect a show of “hits, glitz and (another word I can’t use here)” and the audience roared their approval. First-nighters included die-hard fans from across the country, friends and Broadway stars Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, “Hairspray” songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel, as well as Angela Bassett and Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Along for the ride on stage is a crack 13-piece band led by music director Bette Sussman, Midler’s Harlettes and 20 scantily clad ladies she calls the Caesar Salad Girls. “Each one of them is a hot tomato,” cracked the Divine One, “and served with as little dressing as possible.”
Midler says she’s always dreamed of being a showgirl and Toni Basil’s choreography pays homage to these glamorous performers and includes a Busby Berkeley-style number in which Midler wears a gigantic Carmen Miranda-like pink feather headpiece.
Midler has called this production at the Colosseum, the massive theater built for Celine Dion, her biggest ever. The show, which reportedly cost $10 million, combines concert and Broadway-style costumes and scenic effects, including a gigantic video screen that could eat an IMAX, a seedy motel and an Art Deco chrome staircase that morph into a boat. The show written by Eric Kornfeld and Bruce Vilanch is classic Midler material tweaked and brought up to date. There’s naughty jokes, big dance numbers, and signature songs and characters.
One highlight is a splashy production number in which Dolores Delago and 23 other mermaids flip, kick and motor around in wheelchairs. Imagine the Rockettes on wheels. In another sequence, Midler rides a lips-shaped couch from side to side of the huge stage, railing about scandal-ridden starlets, before ultimately confessing that at one time she could have been the leader of the bad-girl pack. “American Idol” judges Randy, Paula and Simon appear in a video sequence in which their faces and voices become bloated and distorted. Fans of the reality TV show will love it.
Midler closed with “Wind Beneath My Wings.” She and the song sounded better than ever. There was no encore on Wednesday, but like the tornado that blew into Caesars at the start of the show, she was gone with the wind. But don’t worry, “The Showgirl Must Go On” goes on for two years.
jdziemianowicz@nydailynews.com
Bette Midler’s energy proves grand enough for Vegas
By Steve Friess, Special for USA TODAY
Feb 19, 2008
LAS VEGAS — Bette Midler’s most often-cited fear after she agreed to take on her new three-year Vegas gig was that she would be swallowed up by the legendarily mammoth stage of the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.
She shouldn’t have worried.
At a preview attended by USA TODAY on Monday in advance of the official Wednesday grand opening, the 5-foot-1 dynamo was, no doubt about it, front and center in the new production in the House That Celine Built.
Midler is hard to lose track of — her costumes all shimmy with sequins — as she infuses as much of the bawdy jokes, silly antics and intimate ballads as is possible into the Strip-standard 90-minute “The Showgirl Must Go On.” That’s no easy feat. The theater was, after all, built with a gargantuan 22,000-square-foot stage before a 33-by-110-foot LED screen intended for Celine Dion’s Cirque du Soleil-inspired set pieces and 80-dancer cast.
Yet longtime Midler choreographer Toni Basil manages to at times reduce its scope through curtains and lighting for the ballads From A Distance and Hello In There and then fill it with two dozen dancers in mermaid tails working the hardwood territory in wheelchairs for a section in which Bette morphs into her beloved mermaid character Delores Delago. (There was no director for the show; Basil and Midler made most staging and casting decisions.)
“We wanted to utilize all the bells and whistles that are provided to us in that theater,” said Basil, an award-winning video producer and choreographer famed for her classic pop hit Mickey. “But we also didn’t want the tail to wag the dog.”
Midler, 62, repeatedly mocks the enormity of her new berth by noting the exertion necessary to traverse it, suggesting she might need a defibrillator and then chuckling that there are to be “no seizures at Caesars.”
The production opens with a tune written for this endeavor, the titular The Showgirl Must Go On, which gives her chances, as many of her concert numbers do, to interject pithy comments that establish rapport with the audience. It would be inappropriate to describe the opening sequence in too much detail lest one of the most exciting moments of the production is disclosed, but suffice to say that Midler makes an entrance that — literally — blows Vegas away.
Midler pays homage to a variety of her fan constituencies, none less amusingly than her historically huge gay-male base. At one point she quips: “All the girls want to be showgirls. And so do a lot of the boys.”
Alas, there are no boys on the stage aside from the band. Basil had 18 dancers — dubbed the “Caesar Salad Girls” — and Midler’s backup trio known as the Harlettes to direct around the stage, using the video screen mostly for atmospherics. She does, however, manage to weave in uproarious sequences involving the real American Idol judges, Project Runway judge Michael Kors and even Cher, who will also be doing a 100-show-a-year gig at the Colosseum that starts in May.
(Speaking of Idol, fears that Midler’s voice was shot after a much-criticized performance on the talent show’s May finale were allayed by an intense version of When A Man Loves A Woman that led the audience to its feet and left Midler so physically spent she appeared near collapse.)
Indeed, Vegas humor is laced throughout “Showgirl,” from a few digs at Cirque du Soleil that include noting defiantly that there’s “not a French-Canadian circus performer” among Midler’s dance troupe and the appearance of an encouraging Elvis and Wayne Newton on video when Delores Delago needs a lift.
At one point, when Midler’s off-colored Soph character is tearing through a run of ever-dirtier jokes, the star offers an ode to a more innocent age at the Colosseum by cracking, “Come back, Celine! All is forgiven!”
In many ways, the show has a feel of a doctoral thesis in Midler Studies, especially given her recent hints that she might retire from live performing when this run is over in 2011. At a key nostalgia moment just before the Wind Beneath My Wings finale, vintage footage plays on screen of a twentysomething Midler bopping through Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy while on stage, she and her crew re-enact the dance steps.
At a different juncture earlier in “Showgirl,” a then-shocking photo of a young Midler’s bare backside is a pertinent reminder in an age when the tabloids are awash in Paris and Britney that Midler was the original scandal-sheet temptress.
“I was ahead of my time, as usual,” she announced proudly.
Bette Midler set to open sassy ‘Showgirl’ show in Las Vegas
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
LAS VEGAS: Bette Midler unfurls the big feather boa Wednesday in her Las Vegas show, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” a sassy musical reprise of the best hits and worst jokes from her decades in show biz.
The glitzy production, backed by a 13-piece orchestra and 22 rhinestone-studded showgirls, opens with a computer-animated sequence of a whirlwind barreling down the Las Vegas Strip. Some 90 minutes later it ends with Midler towering high above stage on a platform and singing her Grammy-winning “Wind Beneath My Wings.”
In between, a boisterous Midler intersperses her songs with plenty of gutter-ball humor, as seen during a full dress rehearsal before 4,300 invited guests Monday night at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.
Midler entered the stage in a sparkly silver pant suit atop a burro before breaking into a classic Las Vegas-style showgirl number.
Tired and panting afterward, she kept the crowd laughing.
“Oh my God, I’m exhausted,” she said in a mock collapse. “See, that’s what happens when you do your own singing.”
Wednesday’s grand opening is the start of a two-and-a-half year, 200-show engagement at the stage once filled by Celine Dion, before she embarked on a worldwide tour for her album, “Taking Chances.”
It marks the 62-year-old Midler’s first major live performance run since her “Kiss My Brass” tour in Australia in 2005.
Midler worked with gusto, recreating such hits as the song that launched her career, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” from 1973, and many others: “Do You Want to Dance?” (1972), “From a Distance” (1990) and even an upbeat bola-swinging version of “My Way.”
She frequently joked at the size of the stage, at one point equating a walk to stage right to moving into another ZIP code. “If I have to cross this stage one more time, I’ll have a stroke,” she said.
Midler had a half-dozen costume changes and broke out many of the signature characters from over the years, such as Dolores DeLago, the singing mermaid on a wheelchair, and the crass joke-teller in a nightgown, Soph. She also poked fun at today’s troubled young celebrities, including Britney Spears and Spears’ pregnant teenage sister, Jamie Lynn before declaring herself the front-runner as a trashy party girl.
Along with the “Caesars Salad Girls” roster of dancers (”each and every one a tomato”), Midler got backup singing from three recent graduates of a famed school, for which she was pleased to spell the acronym, the Staggering Harlette Institute of Technology.
Various forms of the Harlettes have long been back up singers for the Divine Miss M, who got her start in show business in the 1966 movie epic “Hawaii.” She later landed on Broadway in “Fiddler on the Roof” and in the 1970s, thrilled the gay clientele at New York’s Continental Baths with her trashy sass and Barry Manilow on piano. She went on to win four Grammys, an Emmy and star in movies such as “Beaches,” “Ruthless People” and “The Stepford Wives.”
The$95 million (64.44 million) Colosseum was custom-made for Dion’s run, which began in March 2003, played to nearly 3 million fans and grossed more than$400 million (271 million) over five years. For Midler, the stage was shortened and its rake, or incline toward the audience, was flattened, allowing more than 100 seats to be added, at a cost of $5 million (3.39 million).
Nearly $20 million (14 million) was spent on the production, and more than that was guaranteed for Midler herself, said John Meglen, the president of Concerts West, an AEG Live company that books talent for Caesars. Midler shares the Colosseum with Elton John on different nights and then with Cher, starting May 6.
Tickets, ranging from $95 (64)-$250 (170) for Midler’s first run of 19 shows, are more than 90 percent sold through mid-March, Meglen said, and are available through Ticketmaster. She performs five nights a week.
“She was right, we’re paying her a lot of money. But you know, Bette’s worth it,” he said.
Luxe Life, Feb 20, 2008
BAREFOOT BETTE MIDLER’S GRAND GALA OPENING AS SHE LOSES HER SHOES!
Bette Midler’s new show is “one huge fat super hit” said the alignment of stars who were guests for last night’s glittering red-carpet gala premiere.
“I’m on a high,” Bette told me minutes after the curtain came down. “It was a fabulous first night. I’m relieved. I’m ecstatic. I’m on a high. I’m happy—all those emotions. I’m feeling really good about it. Everything came together just as we dreamed it would. We had a great time. We had a great crowd and we had a lot of fun.”
She jokingly added, “Nobody fell. Nobody died. No fire. No injuries. That’s success! We won!”
But there was a first-night déjà vu moment with Celine Dion’s first night that both Bette and producer John Meglin are taking as a good luck omen.
“When Bette came down the staircase in her red gown she wasn’t wearing her red shoes. It was exactly the same thing that happened with Celine’s first night,” he confided. “Celine lost one red shoe and this was exactly the same thing. Bette lost both her red shoes, too! We told Bette after the show about Celine’s shoe malfunction and she absolutely thought it was an omen for longtime success!”
Bette continued, “True, I lost my shoes. I got there to go on and—no shoes. I had to go on bare feet. I didn’t have time for another pair, and what if they didn’t fit? It didn’t matter. I love the show’s opening. I have the most beautiful lineup of girls in all of Vegas. They are all so happy and enthusiastic to be here.
I love Delores Delgardo’s routine—totally hilarious. I love Soph and her jokes and I love all the songs I sing. I enjoy singing them. The crowds love them and it’s all so dear and lovely. I’ve been sleeping well while we’ve been putting the show together but to be honest I haven’t been out of the hotel in 15-days. It’s like building a ship, a big monster cruise liner, and it’s really hard if you have to turn it around mid-way. We’ve been changing up to the last minute but we did it. I don’t even worry about that giant headdress. I love my set. I think people will flip out when they see it. It’s old school. It’s old Vegas. It’s glamour, glory, glitz, hits and you know what!”
Here for LUXE LIFE regulars is the first on-stage photo of Bette and her Harlettes trio from the premiere.
Bette told the first-niters, “We’ve been working on this show a long time. Everybody on this cast and crew has had a fantastic attitude as we worked long hours to put it all together. We didn’t have one dud in the bunch and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I know we’re going to have fun in Vegas for the next two-years. We want to become a real part of this community. We’ll have fun, not trouble, doing that.”
Among the star lineup for The Show Girl Must Go On at Caesars Palace were Siegfried & Roy, former boy-band chart-busters Lance Bass and Joey Fatone, talk-show host and Hairspray actress Ricky Lake, singer Meatloaf, TV star Alan Thicke and even Bette’s best local friends and my friends and neighbors, boxing promoter Bob Arum and his wife Lovee.
“Now that’s a show,” Bob told me. “That’s what Vegas is all about! She’s sensational. She can last here as long as she can take it. I laughed throughout—she cracks me up. There were some moving moments that brought tears to our eyes. We’ve known Bette, her husband Martin, their daughter Sophie now for about five-years. We became very friendly. She’s great to be with and she will be a great asset to the Vegas community. She will be terrific for this place.”
Seconds after the curtain came down Siegfried told me, “What can you say about it? Bette never disappoints. She always lives up to your expectations. She is the divine one. She gave us a great entertaining night.”
And Roy interjected, “Over the top. I loved it. She is so exciting.”
Alan Thicke commented, “I loved it all but I really laughed at the American Idol segment where Paula, Simon and Randy become distorted on their video. You just cannot miss that. I had tears in my eyes at the end with “Wind Beneath My Wings,” which is a brilliant song—she always kills with it. It reminded me of old-time Vegas variety, especially the music. It was swing tempo and rhythms, and that’s part of what she plays as the old showgirl—the nostalgia is part of what she does. Her breathy voice and quick walk is part of that throwback to old Vegas and that’s why we love her.”
Star choreographer Toni Basil who worked with Bette on all the dance numbers for the Harlettes and the 18 Caesar Salad Dancers (“everyone’s a tomato and without dressing,” as Bette describes them) told me about the challenge of the 120-foot wide stage (“so large its in two different zip-codes,” as Bette refers to it): “I am staging the world’s greatest entertainer… there’s something to live up to there, and the quality of what she lives up to is right there on the stage. We collaborated on it in every tiny detail, so with her input I’m very confident about her on that platform, and we don’t even think of it in terms of being the biggest—or one of the biggest stages in the world.”
My old longtime pal, Meatloaf added, “It was fabulous from start to finish. I don’t know how she does it—just incredible. It’s Bette. She has such charisma. She got it all in there from the old elements, the old characters and then right up-to-date with Paula, Simon and Randy—The American Idol segment made me laugh really hard. She was in my vocal range with “When A Man Loves a Woman.” I’m in awe right now. Just a brilliant show. People need to see Bette!”
Former boy-band stars Joey Fatone, now hosting NBC’s Singing Bee and Lance Bass, fresh from Hairspray on Broadway, walked the red-carpet together and agreed: “She’s the ultimate show-woman. Her Delores character is very funny and the whole thing with the mermaids—wow! The thing with Simon, Paula and Randy was friggin’ funny, the funniest thing we’ve ever seen with what they did with their heads and eyes as fish. Hopefully the three of them will come out to see the finished product because that is funny, really funny. They’re going to howl. It’s all a wonderful show, and from now on we’re Bette-heads!”
Officials with both Caesars Palace and the AEG/Concerts West producers couldn’t have been happier. Harrah’s corporate chief Gary Loveman, who bankrolled the $20-million start-up gamble and guarantees Bette’s huge mega-million paycheck, told me, “The show is all about Bette and it’s all about Las Vegas. It’s a fabulous combination. Our million-dollar bet has paid off big time with some of her greatest characters and some of her greatest vocal performances, all in a very modern setting. Terrific is the only one word to describe it. It’s a great reflection of the old glamorous part of Vegas—a terrific entertainer. Really bigger than life and better in context of what she really does offer. I hadn’t seen any of the show in advance. I’d heard some notions of what I was going to see. I was happy to see it fresh and I was completely thrilled. Completely different than what we’ll have in Cher. We’re going to offer a tremendous selection of entertainers here at Caesars. Both Cher and Bette will be completely different than Celine and both are truly wonderful.”
Concerts West/AEG head honcho John Meglin, who brought the entire Bette Midler project together, added, “She is such a great entertainer. She brings so much personality to the stage and warmth to the room. It’s a marathon not a sprint here, so everything will continue to get better, but what a fabulous start. The reveal of the huge headdress is the only thing that worries me. It’s very tricky, it has to come through Elton’s letters that are up there in the ceiling permanently, so if that works fine I can breathe easy the entire show. I always feel really good about the whole show when that comes down safely and on time! It keeps getting better. I know there’ll be things they’ll change, but it’s just a tweaking.
“You all remember that opening night of Celine. I couldn’t stay here. I had to go across the street and have dinner—it was such a technical nightmare. It takes a lot to stage something like this and you’ve got to get in front of an audience and do it over and over. Bette has already got it down. Celine went on to become an incredible success story and Bette’s already ahead of that with the stage production for opening night comparisons. So I’m feeling very happy and very good.
“It was a great bet on Bette! The show really works. Everyone supports and loves these resident shows. We’re allowing an artist to create the show they love, want and feel good about for once in their lifetime. Bette is so good off script; it will just continue to roll. We’ve already been working on Cher’s show, so it’s not a case of Bette having opened that tomorrow morning we just switch over to Cher. Right now our focus is Bette and we’ll keep on continuing that. I don’t see us as topping each other. It’s not, ‘Bette is better than Celine’ or ‘Cher will be better than Bette.’ We’re just trying to bring the world’s best entertainers here. Bette is obviously one of them and we want to continue with that philosophy. The ticket sales are great. Except for a couple of rear upstairs seats mid-week she’s fully sold for the first three-months. We’ve already put her next block of appearances on sale and they’re just as strong.
Said Caesars Palace president Gary Selesner, “It’s a unique showcase of Bette’s inimitable talents on a grand scale. Caesars audiences from all over the world will love this. It takes a Colosseum to showcase her colossal talents. I know we have another huge hit on our hands. It is an absolutely fabulous and incredible show. It certainly keeps the tradition of Caesars being no.1 with entertainment. Of course there was a worry on my part when Celine came to the end of her contract. After seeing this tonight I don’t have to worry anymore, and next up comes Cher. I couldn’t feel more positive. Our entertainment future is set for more successes.”
CLICK HERE for our advance look at Bette’s show from the sneak peek I was permitted on Monday. I watched her premiere again last night and once more I can tell you confidently that it’s a razzle-dazzle, eye-popping roller coaster of a ride with jewels of jokes, delicious dancing and delectable dancers, plus Bette’s superb singing again there was a mid-show standing ovation for her soul-blasting “When a Man Loves A Woman” that lasted over two-minutes! Pure eye-tearing, choke-in-the-throat emotion! In a sense it’s old Vegas with gorgeous girls and gags and sensational singing and one superstar at the helm in charge for the nearly two-hour visually stunning and energetic spectacle.
Bounty-hunter Duane “The Dog” Chapman and his wife posed with me for a photo in the theater lobby. I congratulated him on the news of his return to TV, now that the suspension has been lifted, with his bounty-hunter realty series.
“That was a humbling experience and I learned an important lesson,” he told me. “We’re so pleased to be here tonight and celebrate our own good news as Bette celebrates hers.” Doug’s wife cut in, “I’m a bigger Bette fan than he is, but we both love her. It’s just that I love her more!”
Rita Rudner, who couldn’t see the show because of her own competing show across the street at Harrah’s, came afterwards for the celebration party at Pure and told me, “I sent Bette a gift and a ‘welcome to Vegas’ letter. I hope she’s as happy here in Vegas as I am. I sent my husband Martin with my girlfriend so he wouldn’t miss it, but now I’m here I think Bette’s going to run the show again just for me! Actually, Martin has promised to take me when I get my next day off.”
No word as to why Cher and Barry Manilow, who I’d expected, were no-shows. Toni Braxton had to cancel at the last minute because she was unwell, but Christine Ebersole who starred in Gypsy with Bette was there.
At the Pure nightclub after-party everybody I talked to agreed that both Bette and Caesars had pulled off another miraculous magical moment in showbiz history. John Meglin and Bette toasted each other and the first night crowd with champagne.
Bette summed up, “I couldn’t be happier. I know we’re going to have a lot of good fun in Vegas and we want to play an important role in this community in many ways over the months and years to come.”