{"id":3137,"date":"2017-09-10T14:55:12","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T21:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2017-09-10T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T21:55:12","slug":"bettes-out-bernadettes-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2017\/09\/10\/bettes-out-bernadettes-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Bette&#8217;s Out, Bernadette&#8217;s In"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone had been speculating what would happen once&nbsp;<strong>Bette Midler&nbsp;<\/strong>left&nbsp;<em>Broadway<\/em>&#8216;s&nbsp;<strong><em>Hello, Dolly<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; After&nbsp;<strong>Carol Channing&nbsp;<\/strong>departed, the original production lasted for six years led by such luminaries as&nbsp;<strong>Phyllis Diller<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Betty Grable<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Ethel Merman<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Martha Raye<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Ginger Rogers<\/strong>, and even&nbsp;<strong>Pearl Bailey<\/strong>.&nbsp; Alas, we live in different times, and there aren&#8217;t quite as many Dollys out there with the necessary name recognition and box-office clout.&nbsp; I hardly expect&nbsp;<strong>Scott Rudin&nbsp;<\/strong>to put millions of dollars behind the serviceable talents of such regional Dollys as&nbsp;<strong>Vicki Lewis&nbsp;<\/strong>or&nbsp;<strong>Sally Struthers<\/strong>.&nbsp; So, the casting of&nbsp;<strong>Bernadette Peters&nbsp;<\/strong>as Bette&#8217;s replacement is not only inevitable but expected.&nbsp; Midler leaves on January 14th.&nbsp; The show will shut down for a week.&nbsp; Then Peters begins previews on January 20th and officially opens on February 22nd.&nbsp; And she won&#8217;t be alone.&nbsp; When Bette leaves, she takes&nbsp;<strong>David Hyde Pierce&nbsp;<\/strong>with her.&nbsp; So, the new Horace Vandergelder will be the dashing&nbsp;<strong>Victor Garber<\/strong>.&nbsp; If anyone is keeping track, this production touts two queer icons playing Dolly and two gay men playing Horace.&nbsp; That&#8217;s gotta count for something.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, when Bette leaves&nbsp;<em>Dolly<\/em>, she&#8217;ll also be taking her alternate with her.&nbsp;&nbsp;<strong>Donna Murphy&nbsp;<\/strong>has been doing all of the Tuesday night shows, a handful of Sundays, and scattered weeks here and there when the&nbsp;<em>Divine Miss M&nbsp;<\/em>needed a nap.&nbsp; Bernadette has announced that she&#8217;ll be playing all eight shows a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone had been speculating what would happen once&nbsp;Bette Midler&nbsp;left&nbsp;Broadway&#8216;s&nbsp;Hello, Dolly.&nbsp; After&nbsp;Carol Channing&nbsp;departed, the original production lasted for six years led by such luminaries as&nbsp;Phyllis Diller,&nbsp;Betty Grable,&nbsp;Ethel Merman,&nbsp;Martha Raye,&nbsp;Ginger Rogers, and even&nbsp;Pearl Bailey.&nbsp; Alas, we live in different times, and there aren&#8217;t quite as many Dollys out there with the necessary name recognition and box-office clout.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3138,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions\/3138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}