It's been exactly one week since I saw Bette Midler on stage at the Booth Theater, in the new Broadway play,
I'll Eat You Last, and I am still basking in the glory of that experience. When I think about Bette Midler's performance last Friday night, the words surreal, sublime, super-fucking-good quickly come to mind, but they do not even begin to convey the magic--the divinity!--of seeing Bette Midler live on stage.
Watching the audience before the show began was a spectacle in its own right. I've never seen so many botched face lifts in one room (actually, there might have been more at Barbra Streisand's Brooklyn show last year). But the Booth Theater audience was fabulous: a New York mix of A-list celebrities (Sarah Jessica Parker), filthy-rich-looking socialites, many of whom belong to the aforementioned botched surgery club, the faithful gays, both young and old, and of course, their fag hags. There was even an Anna Wintour lookalike (and I'm not talking about myself). When the curtain rose and revealed a glowing Bette, lounging on a sofa in full Sue Mengers getup--a sky blue kaftan, tinted glasses and a blond wig--the crowd went wild in a way that they only do for true legends. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air and a sense of appreciation, of gratitude for being lucky enough to be present at what is destined to be one of Broadway's greatest performances. Seriously, how much better can life get than being in New York City, at the Booth Theater, watching Bette Midler in a one woman show?
Early in the show, Sue compares herself to the blue caterpillar in
Alice in Wonderland and that's the exact setup of the whole show: Sue lounging, smoking and drinking, telling stories. For 90 minutes, Bette as Sue did not get up from that sofa. And yet, despite the total lack of action, there was movement... The movement came from the way each story wove into the next, from Bette's posture and the way she shifted her body on the sofa; from the set's afternoon lighting as it slowly turned into evening, and of course from the rhythm of Bette's impeccable, flawless comedic timing. Bette's over-the-top acting style was made for the stage. What a shame it is that theater isn't something she's done more of in her career, though the rarity of this kind of performance makes it all the more special...
My favorite stories of the night were the ones Sue told about Barbra Streisand. The play is set in 1981, a few weeks after Sue has been fired by Barbra's team. Sue and Barbra were very close--Streisand was even the maid of honor at Sue's wedding--but Sue hasn't heard from Babs personally regarding her firing. Sue is clearly hurt by this, but the hurt is hidden behind her rage. She is pissed! She has the phone right by her side, and she is waiting for Barbra's call, waiting to unleash. In a hilarious moment of uncontrolable fury, she yells at the phone: "Call me, you cunt!" Hearing Bette Midler (even though it's said as Sue) call Barbra Streisand a cunt was fucking brilliant. Divine!
It was a clever move on the writer's part to set up the phone as the show's antagonist. The phone was responsible for Sue's incredible success--she used it better than anyone, making deals that made the careers of Hollywood's biggest stars. But the phone is also representative of Sue's downfall. At the time the play takes place, the phone's ring usually signals the departure of yet another client who's decided to seek new representation. Sue's old-time charm and schemes don't work in the 80s the way they did in the 70s. She can't compete with CAA, the new, juggernaut agency that's stealing away all her clients. But the play isn't just about the ways Hollywood would change in the 80s... it's about going for it, whatever 'it' may be for each of us. As a child, when Sue came to the US from Germany, she didn't know a word of English. She eventually learned and trained herself to lose the accent, and from there no one could stop her. She was relentless in making her dreams come true and she succeeded. Most importantly, she had fun in the process.
Bette does a beautiful job of bringing the late Sue Mengers back to life, but she doesn't completely disappear in the role; it's hard not to see Bette on stage, but I think that's a good thing. The feisty, fiery, and frequently nasty Sue Mengers totally evokes the equally sassy stage persona of Bette Midler. So while
I'll Eat You Last allows the audience to discover a fascinating woman most of us had never heard of before, it also satisfies our insatiable desire for the Divine Miss M, who is as divine as ever.
Bette Midler outside the stage door, sadly she didn't stay very long and never came over to our side...
