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.) I
ndeed, 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.
