It’s Betty Buckley’s turn. The star of stage and screen is getting her shot at playing Dolly Levi in “Hello, Dolly!” — a role made hot again with a 2017 revival starring Bette Midler — with a national tour that will have one-week runs in Miami and West Palm Beach.
“I saw the show a year ago, right before the Tonys,” Buckley says in a telephone interview from Chicago, where the tour sat for four weeks. “And I thought it was one of the greatest pieces of musical theater I’ve ever seen. The [creative team] was just incredible. And of course Bette Midler was so incredible and charming. I was very surprised when [producer] Scott Rudin and [director] Jerry Zaks called me in January to do this tour … it came as quite a shock. It was not a role that I had particularly marked for myself in any way. But I was so moved and humbled by this particular production. I was honored.”