It’s not easy being a diva. The gowns, the entourages, the hair-care products — how do they do it? Lugging all that stuff into four-star hotels, squeezing their egos into suites fit for common multimillionaires — it’s a wonder they have the time, let alone the energy, to entertain all the little people who pay hundreds of dollars to worship at their feet.
Then there’s Bette Midler, the anti-diva.
Mincing across the stage of the United Center in stiletto heels, Midler was a pint-sized water pistol hosing down the pompous, the pretentious and the over-priced — including herself. “I can’t even afford these seats,” she cracked, remarking on the going rate of $150 for her performance Saturday. “That’s why I’m standing.”
Even while suggesting that nobody is worth that kind of dough (she’s right), Midler at least put out while putting us on. No one was spared from her jokes and spoofs, especially the grand dames of 20th Century pop: Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Ethel Merman, Edith Piaf (whose “I Regret Nothing” became “I Regret Everything”), even gay icon Sylvester, who got his due with a boisterous “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
Slipping into her paraplegic-mermaid character, Delores, Midler lounged like a temptress on a toy piano, wiggling a tailfin while singing a lascivious ode to special prosecutor “Ken Starfish.” Then she mounted the bow of a mini-Titanic to send forth the melodrama, in mock celebration of Mighty Mouse herself, Celine Dion.
As confetti spiraled like brightly colored snow from the ceiling, “Delores” slipped out of the mermaid outfit and returned in a pants suit, remarkable only for its blandness, to sing Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today.” It’s a melody too poignant, a lyric too understated, for most divas to bother trifling with, but Midler sang it like she was in love with the tune rather than her aura.
In that odd but effective juxtaposition of earthy humor and heart, Midler revealed the essence of what makes her unique in diva-dom. For the first half of the two-hour performance, split by an interminable intermission, the singer struggled to rouse a sedate audience. The erratic pacing — comedic monologues interspersed with song snippets — didn’t help. When she got down to music in Part 2, she couldn’t be denied: swinging frenetically on the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”; longing wistfully on “Sunrise Sunset,” from her days on Broadway; channeling Janis Joplin on “Stay With Me Baby”; and practically purring on her sly, sexy reading of “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road).”
The performance emphasized that, unlike the Dions and Streisands of the world who were born to bray in hockey rinks, Midler is still essentially a cabaret performer who thrives on audience interaction and intimacy. To win over the United Center, she had to resort to her broadest, most cliched gestures, formula tear-jerkers such as “The Rose,” a truncated “From a Distance” and “Wind Beneath My Wings.”
But Midler didn’t so much bask in such applause-fetching moments as size them up for punch lines, which is why she charms when so many other divas grate. “A big swirling ball of gas,” she declared, striking a Streisand-worthy pose, “that’s what a star is.”
