Bette Midler: Kiss My Brass

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(Tour over)

    Floating in on a white carousel horse in the cavernous Wachovia Center, Bette Midler lorded over her always-adoring Philadelphia crowd proclaiming, “I have returned!” like a conquering hero, and promising she’s “not retiring, and you can’t make me.” On a brutally cold night, Miss M had her Philly fans packed to the rafters for her new show, lapping up her trademark shtick like it was a cheesesteak.
    Slinging lines about the Eagle’s Donavan McNabb and Mayor Street’s FBI probe, she opened with a bombastic medley, "Kiss My Brass/Big Noise From Winnetka," backed by her trio of newly minted Harlettes. Ostensibly, she's touring to support her new CD Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook, but this ill-conceived homage has been all but scrapped for remembrances of tacky and tawdry things past. With the star costumed in Shirley Temple curls and an anchors away outfit, Midler’s current production is back-dropped against a dazzling multi-media carnival atmosphere, a brass heavy band and enough kitsch to keep Liberace spinning jealously in his grave.
    Philly fans still talk about Midler being carried in by musclemen in her Clams on a Half-Shell Review in the 70s, at the legendary supper-club, the Erlanger Theater. But others remember even further back to the Divine Miss M bathed in a cobalt blue spotlight at the Bijou Cafe in 1972 singing "Am I Blue," fresh from her notorious stint at the Continental Baths in New York. She revived beloved theatrical songs like "Skylark" and the wartime bonbon "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," two songs she kept earnest and fresh on this night.
    Midler still careens vocally from being the brassiest of belters to a pop diva to a whispering chanteuse. At 58, she is at fighting weight, showing off her great gams in mile-high heels and showing she has as much to offer as anybody out there. And the unfussy choreography framing songs like "Do You Want To Dance" and "Chapel of Love" shone better than ever for Bette and the Harlettes. Their naturally sexy moves should be a lesson to all other pop divas with big shows.
    But before long Midler’s vocalese is at the mercy of her dizzying production numbers. She’s the last surviving vaudevillian and won’t abandon some of her tried and true warhorses. Yet again she turned up in her reincarnation of Sophie Tucker, delivered this time in a dusty Zeigfeld Follies-era gown and beach motif. Then there’s the return of Delores Delago (the toast of Chicago) in tarnished mermaid costume, with Bette and the Harlettes whirling around in wheelchairs. Creeky and tasteless, Bette croaked out fishy snippets from Gypsy, West Side Story, and Cabaret. Note to Bette: there’s a reason why vaudeville died.
    Midler's a great stand-up comic and her banter with the audience includes scripted political comments, cloying pleas for peace, limp Viagra jokes and rapid-fire barroom vulgarity, all of which keeps the crowd hanging on every word. She drags her bizarre career baggage onstage, the triumph and the flops recounted in rapid-fire anecdotes. There’s even a filmed skit with Judge Judy, revisiting Midler's biggest career embarrassment, Bette, a sit-com based on her life. (She's penning a book that will expose the backstabbing cesspool of network television.) Yawn.
    Midler’s always been a smart enough performer to play to the cheap seats in the back, but when the cheap seats in the back at the Wachovia Center are $115, Bette’s metal can sound a little tinny. She offered only "Hey There" and "Tenderly" in her tribute to Rosemary Clooney. As much as she obviously admires the late singer, her voice is different and can be modulated only in the studio to evoke Clooney’s crystalline delivery.
    Midler revised tunes from The Rose, a la Janis Joplin, that employed her brass section in muscular dialogues in two "rock" numbers. She gave a straightforward reading of "When a Man Loves a Woman" without crashing her voice as she did on film, but when she charged through "Keep on Rockin," she faced off with her brass section which almost overpowered her; still, she kept cranking them up.
    Dedicating her hit "Wind Beneath My Wings" to a local philanthropist, Midler replicated her recording, without back-up singers, cutting the teary ballad short before she had to go for those high flying notes at the end. More interesting was a fully orchestrated version of her hit "The Rose" that was built into an anthem. She can pull at the heartstrings with such numbers as "Human Kindness" and "September 11," but they come off as personal indulgence. Then, a number like Tom Waits' "Shiver Me Timbers" evokes Midler’s motifs of maritime and loss and her old blue magic steals your heart all over again.