THE MAGIC OF MISS M.('Kiss My Brass,' Nassau Colesium, Uniondale, Long Island, New York)(Theater Review)

If you're fortunate enough to catch Bette Midler's extraordinary revue "Kiss My Brass" (on tour through March 2nd), you'll be reminded not only what a star is but what makes Midler such a great one. Even before she got to work on January 3rd at the Nassau Coliseum, in Uniondale, Long Island, where I saw the show, Midler was in evidence everywhere--not least in the memories of those who had come to see her. As I waited for a parking space near the arena, the car's headlights illuminated a group of young black boys hawking T-shirts silkscreened with the Divine Miss M.'s brightly colored likeness: there were her Egyptian eyes, her mischievous mouth, and that long, crooked pillar of a nose. But soon the Technicolor Bette faded, in my mind, to a black-and-white photograph of the star that I remember seeing in the mid-seventies. It was a backstage shot, taken after a performance of Midler's hit show at the Palace in New York, which broke box-office records in 1973. In the photograph, the twenty-seven-year-old Midler was holding a bouquet of blossoms and smiling her soon-to-be-famous Bette smile--a wide, coquettish grin that verges on lunacy. It was clear from her expression that the girl who just three years earlier had been underground, singing in a gay bathhouse, had metamorphosed into a popular artist.

That artistry was on full display once Midler took the stage at the Nassau Coliseum--which for the first act was designed to resemble Coney Island (though it oddly reminded me more of the Moscow skyline). Midler arrived on a mechanical horse, like a Jewish Lady Godiva. I never got the point of the horse or the backdrop, but over the next two and a half hours Midler gave us no time to worry about what they or anything else might be supposed to mean. Dressed in blue satin sailor pants, a sheer sailor blouse with anchors stitched on its short sleeves, and a sailor cap that was set rakishly on her mop of Lucille Ballish red curls, Midler began by dismissing the horse she rode in on ("Beat it, Seabiscuit!") and blasting us with applause-raising cries of "I'm not going to retire yet!" Then, with her three backup singer-dancers, the Harlettes, she minced and sashayed across the stage, describing everything she'd gone through to give us the show we were about to see. "This is the biggest thing I've ever done, ladies and gentlemen," she said, bullying us into believing it. "We've got shit backstage that I've never seen!" She briefly established her political leanings--"Poor Rush Limbaugh! Poor, fat, stupid, hypocritical, drug-addicted Rush!" And then she went in for the kill. "I've seen the young people," she said, casting a sidelong glance at the audience. "I've seen Christina Aguilera," she sniffed. "She was wearing pasties and garters! All these new girls are so trashy!" Beat. "And do I get a thank-you note? I opened the door to trash! I was trashy before any of these girls were born!"

Having staked out her territory in contemporary culture, Midler felt ready to introduce--or reintroduce--us to her past. She left the stage for a moment, and three video screens descended from the rafters. There, onscreen, was the Divine Miss M. as she had appeared thirty years before--frizzy hair, plucked eyebrows, big clunky platform shoes--kicking it to what has become one of her signature tunes: "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." But, just as we were about to settle into a warm bath of nostalgia, the present-day Midler took the stage again, singing and dancing along even more gleefully than her former self. Having been around long enough to experience her share of pain, Midler seemed to be telling us, she can now experience greater joy.

To prove the point, she then regaled the audience--again from the video screens--with a skit about the failure of her 2000-01 TV sitcom, "Bette." The video showed Judge Judy admonishing Midler for having trashed CBS after the network cancelled her show. Just as the entertainer began to argue in ...