Best Bette
The Divine Miss M Rocks Vegas with The Showgirl Must Go On.
A sudden cheer explodes around the outside patio of Rao’s at Caesars Palace when the Divine Miss M emerges from the almost darkness of what minutes before had just been a hurried visage of cater waiters fluttering around with flutes of champagne.
Flanked by a huge entourage, the extremely tiny in person Bette Midler begins to sashay her way through the crowd of mostly media and industry types who have been invited to catch the debut of Midler’s 90-minute Vegas-themed extravaganza The Showgirl Must Go On.
Larger than life on stage for nearly four decades, but soft and demure in the flesh, Midler goes about shaking hands and thanking everyone for coming to see the show, which in February replaced Celine Dion’s long-running show at Caesars and will rotate for the next several years with fellow gay icons Cher and Elton John.
She doesn’t say a lot and she looks visibly tired from the night’s performance and after show festivities — but the physical weariness is deserved as Midler electrifies with her trademark brass and class, rocking the largest pink feather headdress imaginable, wheeling across the 7,000-square-foot stage as mermaid songstress and “toast of Chicago” Delores Delago, delivering naughty jokes with witty aplomb as Soph, the oldest living showgirl in Vegas, and of course singing all the hits she is loved for including “Wind Beneath My Wings,” “The Rose,” “From a Distance,” and a scorching, passionate, it’s so good the hair on the back of your neck will stand at attention, “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
If you’ve ever seen Midler in concert — and let’s face it, it’s practically a gay rite of passage — you know what to expect. Midler remains the only performer who can have you crying over one of her heart-tugging ballads one minute and then have you busting a gut at one of her raucous one-liners the next. She promises “glitz, hits, and tits” and delivers on every level with a show that includes a 13-piece band, 20 female dancers nicknamed the “Caesar Salad” girls, the staggering Harlettes —her longtime backup singers, blistering jokes written in part by gay icon Bruce Vilanch and choreography by Toni Basil of “Oh Mickey” fame.
Midler emerges on stage literally from a tornado displayed on the Colosseum’s high definition LED screen — the largest indoor LED screen in North America, standing 34 feet tall by 109 feet wide and weighing 31 tons.
She blows into town atop 2,200 pounds of Louis Vuitton luggage before tearing into “Pretty Legs (and Great Big Knockers)” and then shouting out to her two tribes — the gays and the jews. One of the funnier moments in the show is when Midler displays a picture of herself with Cher and Elton John, taken sometime in the 70s to which she cackles, “just us girls,” before joking about how the three of them are making Vegas gayer than ever. Another fabulous retort comes at the expense of fellow Vegas headliner Toni Braxton over whom Midler admits she has “billboard envy” over because Braxton’s whole body literally adorns the entire wall of the Flamingo hotel where she is headlining.
“I wonder if you have to pay extra to stay in the room between her legs,” Midler cracks.
Of the show, Midler says: “I have been building to this for my whole life. I’m really looking forward to it. I have been hoarding feathers and fans and sequins and rhinestones for the last 50 years and, hey I’m ready to throw ‘em all on stage.”
Midler has agreed to perform 100 shows a year at Caesars over the next few years. It’s a huge undertaking for the diminutive 62-year-old, who had 75,000 individually hand-painted gold coins made to embellish the gold curtains and coin trees that are featured on stage.
The show is very heavy on nods to Vegas, known for its flashy shows and sometimes trashy “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” aesthetic. There are a total of 132 costume changes, belying the fabulosity one expects from a Vegas production.
Critics from coast to coast are raving: “Like all great showgirls, (Midler) may wear sequins like a second skin, but the woman underneath is all flesh and blood, humor and heart,” said the New York Times.
Added the Los Angeles Times: “Bette Midler is brash, funny, schmaltzy, surprising, poignant, charming, provocative, witty, bawdy and, of course, divine.”
Back at the after-party, Midler has stopped to talk to old friends and business colleagues. She talks to former Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host Robin Leach for what seems like an eternity before running into an old manager from her early, early days when the best gigs she could get were in gay bathhouses.
Suddenly the spitfire is back: “Oh I bet you wish you had stuck with me now, don’t you?” she jokes, erupting in laughter and hugs.
And then I have my fleeting moment with the superstar I have loved since her career reinvention in 80s movies like Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, Outrageous Fortune, and of course, Beaches, which then caused me to discover her as a singer because of her Grammy-winning chestnut “Wind Beneath My Wings.”
I tap her on the shoulder, tell her who I am and that the gays in Phoenix would love to see her in Echo. And then she puts her arm around me and flashes that megawatt smile, the picture is taken and my life is forever changed! (And then spend the next several hours literally hyper-ventilating).
Then just as magically as she appeared, Midler is suddenly gone again, no doubt going home to get some rest for the next evening’s sold-out show.
Midler returns for her second run of performances (Cher is there in the meantime!) at The Colosseum on Tuesday, June 24, through Sunday, July 20. The show is dark on Mondays and Thursdays.
Tickets for The Showgirl Must Go On, priced at $95, $140, $175 and $250, 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 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Reach the reporter at editor@echomag.com.
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