I'm in no great hurry to see the new Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler. Next trip to New York, if it's still running and I can get tix without selling my car, I probably will but I'm not a huge fan of the musical itself and I'll probably see it wishing she was just doing her concert show instead.
Hey, you know what Al Jolson used to do when he was in a book musical? Sometimes, he'd just stop the show — literally — and break character. He'd walk down to the footlights and ask the audience, "Say, how's about if instead of doing the rest of this play, we send the actors home and I'll just sing to you?" The audience would always cheer its approval and that's what would happen. They wouldn't finish the play. He'd sing "Swanee" and "California, Here I Come" and all his other hits, sometimes for hours. The orchestra always had that sheet music handy because they never knew when he was going to do that. Wonder how everyone would react if Bette tried that some night.
Anyway, her Dolly cast album is coming out shortly and previews of it are all over the 'net. At the moment, for what I assume is a limited time, you can hear the entire thing here. On various forums, debates are occurring between theater buffs who love it and those who feel that its makers have made a big orchestra sound like a small orchestra and lost a certain brassiness that the Jerry Herman tunes seem to require. I'm not taking sides on this one. Decide for yourself.