July 23--There's always been something a bit mythical about the earliest years of Bette Midler's career, when she performed her cabaret act in the basement of the Continental Baths in New York City. With Barry Manilow accompanying her on piano, she would strut and belt and wink and tease, dazzling a clearly adoring crowd.
The whole thing just sounds so unlikely (a cabaret at a gay bathhouse?) and it would be little more than the stuff of legend were it not for long-lost footage from a 1971 show (fuzzy and in black and white) that someone posted on YouTube. Watching it you can see Midler is still a bit rough around the edges, but she commands the room by sheer force of personality and that voice. And she was all of 25 at the time.
"Bette, Live at the Continental Baths" (from Hell in a Handbag Productions) re-creates that night almost verbatim, right down to the campy patter between songs (which range from blues to Motown classics) and the effect is something like watching a tribute band.
As the woman of the hour, Caitlin Jackson doesn't really look like the Divine Miss M (her features are far more classically beautiful than Midler's) but she delivers a performance that captures the singer's knowing playfulness ("This is my 800th farewell appearance at the Baths, I swear") and her periodic faux dismissive hand-wave toward the audience, as if to say, "Oh, relax!" or "Eh, I'm exhausted, what's next?" or "We're all conspirators down here while the squares are nodding off somewhere else."
Just as importantly, Jackson captures the size of this future star's ambitions. The unspoken joke you pick up from that old footage -- and on reflection, maybe it's no joke at all -- is that Midler is slumming it in these modest surroundings, a pit stop on her way to bigger things. She was hungry.
Chicagoans understand this moment in a performer's life (you see it all the time on the city's improv scene), where the stakes are low but a loose, anything-goes quotient is high, and director Christopher Pazdernik understands both sides of this coin.
And yet.
There's something about the show that doesn't fully gel. Jackson has a lovely voice, but her energy and stage presence is nothing like Midler's. With a show like this, you either go for a full-on impression or you use the source material as a springboard to something else. The show currently occupies an awkward middle ground between these two options.
Jackson isn't doing an impersonation, but more of a loving nod in Midler's direction. That's a legitimate choice and on some level you have to take Jackson's performance on its own terms -- and it is as full of good-humored sass and wit as you'd want. But because she's doing Midler's show word-for-word (with some exceptions to the set list), she's stuck in a trap of her own making that doesn't leave much room to develop or discover her own thing.
REVIEW: "Bette, Live at the Continental Baths" by Hell in a Handbag Productions
2.5 STARS
Through Aug. 21 at Mary's Attic, 5400 N. Clark St.; tickets are $20-$22 at www.hangbagproductions.org
nmetz@tribpub.com
