Bette Midler Hello, Dolly! Pushes Back First Preview by Two Days

Playbill
Bette Midler Hello, Dolly! Pushes Back First Preview by Two Days
BY ROBERT VIAGAS
AUG 04, 2016

Bette Midler’s Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! has pushed back the date of its first preview from March 13 to March 15, 2017. No reason for the change was announced.

Tony and Emmy winner David Hyde Pierce ( Curtains, Frasier) will co-star as Horance Vandergelder opposite Midler’s Dolly Gallagher Levi in the revival of the blockbuster 1964 musical.

Hello Dolly!

The production will play the Shubert Theatre, current home of the Tony-winning Mailda the Musical, which will play its final performance at the Broadway venue January 1, 2017.

As previously reported, four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks will direct, and Tony winner Warren Carlyle will choreograph the production, which is scheduled to open April 20.

The title role, one of the greatest leading lady roles in musical theatre, was written for Ethel Merman, but ultimately originated by Carol Channing, who won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical for the role, and also starred in the most recent Broadway revival of the musical in 1995. During its original run the role was played by Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Mary Martin, Phyllis Diller, Bibi Osterwald, Thelma Carpenter, Pearl Bailey and, at last, Merman.

Scott Rudin produces.

The show has a book by Michael Stewart, based on The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, and a score by Jerry Herman. It won a then-record ten Tony Awards in 1964, including Best Musical, and ran 2,844 performances making it briefly the longest-running musical in Broadway history.