Review: Bette Midler’s ‘Divine Intervention Tour’ hits the UK
By Will Stroude
The Divine Intervention Tour – Birmingham Barclaycard ArenaThe last time Bette Midler played a UK tour date was in 1980. As the Divine Miss M brings her ‘Divine Intervention Tour’ to UK shores, Attitude’s Simon Button tags along to see if it’s been worth the wait…
When Bette Midler joked that “Haley’s Comet comes once every 76 years and so do I” on her Mud Will Be Flung Tonight comedy album she was being filthily funny. (She also quipped that even though Calvin Klein had his own jeans, his own underwear and his own cologne “I still wouldn’t fuck him!” which I’m repeating here simply because it still makes me howl with laughter.) But she could also have been talking about the frequency of her UK live shows, since her all-guns-blazing, firing-on-all-cylinders Divine Intervention tour marks her first schlep around these shores in a staggering 35 years.
Not that “lazy cow” is a phrase you’d ever hurl at The Divine Miss M. In those three-and-a-half decades she’s made ten new albums, done more than 25 movies, toured the states, cultivated parks and gardens in New York, brought Johnny Carson to tears (YouTube it) and enjoyed a Las Vegas residency with her Showgirl Must Go On extravaganza. I saw the latter, loved what there was of it, but felt a little shortchanged by a shortened show, as befits the gambling mecca’s policy of keeping audiences out of the casinos for the least possible time.
Bette is more generous with her time this time around. The new show runs for nearly two hours with three quick costume changes and all her signature tunes are present and correct. The Rose, From A Distance, Stay With Me and, of course, Wind Beneath My Wings… They’re all here, sung with great gusto by an entertainer who celebrates her 70th birthday this December but who has the tonsils, torso and sheer Jewish chutzpah of a woman half her age. OK, so she sang Stay With Me in a much lower register than she used to but she still tackled it with the raw emotion of a consummate actress.
She’s also still a bawdy, brassy broad. She rattles off her legendary Sophie Tucker jokes – some from the vaults, some new – with ribald glee and F-bombs to spare. And if she’s sent Delores Delago, her fishtailed disco diva mermaid known for her wheelchair-bound dance routines, into retirement it’s clear Midler herself isn’t ready for retirement any time soon. Just witness her tearing into the Rolling Stones’ Beast Of Burden sounding as ballsy as she did when she first covered it on her No Frills album in 1984.
The first half of the show is mainly dedicated to songs from Bette’s latest album, It’s The Girls, such as an energetic rendition of Tell Him (her Staggering Harlettes backing singers come in very handy here) and a lovely stripped-down version of TLC’s Waterfalls. Then a truly poignant rendition of I Think It’s Going To Rain Today from Beaches launches a run of fan favourites like I Put A Spell On You (complete with a replica of her Hocus Pocus costume), all those big ballads and a Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy encore to send everyone out singing.
That’s your lot and boy is it worth waiting 35 years for. Few entertainers, if any, can flit so effortlessly from splitting sides to bringing tears to eyes, all whilst wearing high heels. Midler struts across the stage like a tireless diva, her one concession to her age being when she has the Harlettes wheel her around on a lips-shaped couch while she goes on an hilarious rant about social media. She’s earned the right to a lie down and I can think of no other 69-year-old with such through-the-roof levels of joy and energy. In another 35 years I wouldn’t place bets against Bette still strutting it with the best of ’em.
Rating: 5/5
The Divine Intervention tour runs until July 19th. For show dates and tickets visit www.bettemidler.com and www.livenation.co.uk
WORDS: SIMON BUTTON
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