Xcel Energy Center
December 19, 2003
Brassy
Midler is as silly as ever When it comes to putting on
a big, brassy show bursting with humor and R-rated Bette Midler came to St. Paul's
Xcel Center Friday night on her first tour in four years, and served
up a silly, satisfying feast of funniness and showmanship that,
for pure enjoyment, rivaled what any entertainer in the business
is offering. At 58, Midler hasn't mellowed a bit, still hyperactively pacing the stage in tiny steps when she isn't sailing across it in mermaid fins and wheelchair. Bursting with flamboyance and chutzpah, Midler manages to mix old-fashioned brazen burlesque with show-stopping ballads from the R&B tradition. Even if her voice is a tad rougher around the edges than it was 20 years ago, Midler had the crowd of 10,223 in the palm of her manicured hand from the opening set of swing tunes through to the last passionate encore. Tossing out one-liners even during the first number, Midler disarmed the audience with a silly stage show built around the boardwalk of her native New Jersey and a comic aesthetic that's one part borscht belt and a large dollop of bathhouse bawdiness. "Kiss My Brass" is the theme of the tour, and she leaned upon her five-piece horn section heavily during the jazzier numbers. But the band ended up being eclipsed by Midler's larger-than-life personality and such wild set pieces as the show-within-a-show, "Fish Tales Over Broadway," in which Midler and her backing singers were decked out as mermaids. Yes, that's an extension of a theme Midler's offered on past tours, as was her extended Sophie Tucker impression, which found her striding about the stage telling a series of jokes, none of them suitable for reprinting in a family newspaper. But it never took on the stuffiness of a museum piece. If the first part of the almost three-hour show leaned upon the past — including a couple of songs from her fairly fresh tribute to Rosemary Clooney — the second was geared toward the pop tunes that brought her to the top of the pop charts in the late '70s and early '80s, like "From a Distance" and "Wind Beneath My Wings." Midler knows how to work a crowd marvelously, throwing as much local color into her banter as would fit, calling the front row her own private Edina and claiming that Minneapolitans got her bluer material while St. Paulites disdained it. But that's the kind of connection with an audience that Midler has used to her benefit throughout her career. And it was just one more element of an enormously entertaining performance. Bette Midler is
simply divine
No diva, pop princess or queen
of this or queen of that could match Midler for the combination
of wit and wisdom, humor and humanity, warmth and wonderful outrageousness
that she brings to the stage. And she's a pretty good singer and
dancer, too. Her entrance Friday night at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul was part Douglas MacArthur, part Peter Pan and purely Divine Miss M. She came floating in on a carousel horse, dressed in a sailor's suit. "I have returned," she declared. "I'm fabulous. Don't I look it?" At 58, Midler looked fabulous, sounded in fine voice but she flubbed several of her lines. She playfully blamed it on menopause. "I used to be so quick," she said when she was trying to say that Edina was an acronym -- but she said anachronism before correcting herself -- for Every Day I Need Attention. Midler, who talked almost as much as she sang, had plenty of jokes with local references, from lutefisk and Lutherans to St. Louis Park and Jews to Randy Moss and meter maids. The best from Bette: "I love that you say 'you bet.' And I say, 'Yes, I am.' " The New Yorker went after Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction and Saddam Hussein's spider hole. She also made fun of herself, doing a filmed bit with "Judge Judy" trying to settle a dispute between CBS and Midler over her flopped TV series "Bette." For her sentence, the guilty singer came onstage and broke into Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry." Midler's 2 1/4-hour, two-act Kiss My Brass Tour was part video and part vaudeville. Midler sang live while Mr. Rogers dueted with her via video on "I Like to Be Told." She also did her vaudeville character, Soph, telling ribald, pun-filled jokes that got raucous response from the 10,223 fans. And, of course, she wheeled out her other famous character, Delores de Lago, the singing mermaid in a wheelchair doing "Fishtails from Broadway." The send ups of "Annie," "Hello Dolly" and other musicals were hilarious but, at nearly 25 minutes, probably dragged on 10 minutes too long. But Midler has never shied away from overkill. All the high camp was complemented by the high emotion of Midler's songs. She did straightforward, nicely understated renditions of her hit ballads, "Wind Beneath My Wings," "From a Distance" and "The Rose." A potent new ballad, "September," asked what we learned from Sept. 11. She got lost belting a bluesy "When a Man Loves a Woman," while strutting with her mincing little steps. And nothing was more beautiful than her sincere, smiling reading of "White Christmas" as she sat on the stage to close the evening. The sincerity mixed with the show-biz, the shtick and the silliness made for another ridiculously sublime evening with the Divine Miss M. |
entertainment
value, the divine Miss M is as divine as ever after all these decades.
They
don't make 'em like Bette Midler anymore. Actually, maybe they never
did.