Review: Bette Midler is Sassy and Brassy in "Hello Dolly"

There's a dancing horse. A moving steam train. Spinning waiters slamming the lids on silver serving dishes.

And then there, at the top of the stairs, her hair crowned by a poof of red feathers, is Bette Midler as Dolly Levi, from Yonkers. She's come to Manhattan to try to snag herself a wealthy husband, after spending her widowhood as a just-scraping-by matchmaker.

"Hello Dolly" is an old fashioned musical done in an old fashioned way — with vivid costumes, a cast of (so it seems) thousands, exceptional choreography and a bona fide star at its center.

Midler is best when she's just being, well, Bette Midler. She's sassy and brassy, and her comic timing is so good that when she spends an eon gnawing on a chicken leg, the scene just gets funnier and funnier.

But — in the preview I attended — there wasn't enough of her being herself. When she slips into being just Dolly Levi, her character can feel mechanical and vague. Yet even during those scenes when Middler seems to be phoning it in, the production is twirling around her in technicolor. David Hyde Pierce is a funny, befuddled wonder as the target of Dolly's affection Horace Vandergelder. Kate Baldwin as Irene Malloy shines as the owner of a city hat shop who wants to find love. 

"Hello Dolly" isn't Hamilton, or even "Dear Evan Hansen." It doesn't break new ground. It isn't contemporary or risky. Instead, it covers well-trod territory, but with panache, and a trolley full of fun.

Hello Dolly

Book by Michael Stewart; music and lyrics by Jerry Herman; based on a play by Thornton Wilder; directed by Jerry Zaks

At the Shubert Theatre

225 West 44th Street