Feelin’ the Bern
Bernadette Peters takes over lead role in ‘Hello, Dolly!’
IT’S no mean feat replacing Bette Midler in “Hello, Dolly!”
Midler was the No. 1 attraction on Broadway in 2017, racking up weekly grosses of $2.5 million and winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Well, raise your hat, fellows — there’s a new Dolly in Shubert Alley and she’s tearing the place apart.
I’ve heard from countless “Dolly” fans that Berna
dette Peters is giving the performance of her career in Jerry Zaks’ exquisite production.
The texts came in fast and furious after her first performance a few weeks ago. As she made her entrance on the trolley car, the audience jumped up and gave her a standing ovation — for five minutes.
“The ovation is still going on,” a spy texted me. “She doesn’t know how to stop it!”
There were three more standing ovations that night, and I heard that one man in the front row had to be restrained from jumping on- stage and joining the galloping waiters in the title song.
Another spy, a veteran Broadway ad exec, texted, “OMG — Bernadette Peters is so fabulous! The best Dolly EVER!”
He should know. He’s seen every Dolly from Carol Channing to Pearl Bailey to Phyllis Diller. The only one he didn’t see was Mary Martin because she did it on a tour in Vietnam in 1966 and he was 10 and lived in Queens.
The ovations for Peters are now coming like clockwork.
Above the Shubert Theatre, where “Dolly” is ensconced, are the executive offices of the Shubert Organization. It’s usually a pretty quiet place, but around 4 o’clock on matinee days they can hear the thunderous applause when Peters comes down that staircase and sings, “Hello, Harry . . .”
And let’s give a nod to Peters’ leading man, Victor
Garber. He, too, has a tough assignment: replacing the wonderful David
Hyde Pierce as Horace Vandergelder.
Backstage sources tell me that Garber was nervous during the early previews. He has not been in a musical since he played, deliciously, the devil in a revival of “Damn Yankees” in 1994.
“I haven’t done this in a long time,” he said backstage just before making his entrance at his first preview. But he, too, has settled into the part, and the chemistry between him and Peters is now palpable.
Several years ago a scurrilous columnist in this newspaper mocked and ridiculed Peters for her turn in “Gypsy.” He thought she was miscast and then — after she got some rave reviews but missed some performances due to illnesses — he put her image on a milk carton in his column.
Theater people were so angry with him that some of them stopped speaking to him for years. One of them even grabbed him by his tie at an opening night party and tried to strangle him. Peters, always a class act, never said a thing about his merciless taunts. But she got her revenge by stopping the Tony Awards cold that year with her rendition of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”
I have no idea where that columnist is today — although I sometimes see him when I look in a mirror. But should he materialize, I hope Peters can find it in her heart to forgive him and invite him to her opening on Feb. 22.
Shubert Alley will be renamed Dolly Way that night, and the red carpet will extend from Shubert Theatre across 44th Street to Sardi’s.
It promises to be the best party of the season.