You Bette! Midler in Broadway’s new “Hello, Dolly!”

Well, this is just delicious.

Producer Scott Rudin announced today that Bette Midler will return to Broadway in the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, Dolly!.

Midler confirmed the news on Twitter: ‘Yes, I am taking on the role of the beloved Dolly Levi in “Hello, Dolly!”. We open next year on Broadway! So excited!’

The new production will be directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks and will begin performances on Broadway on March 13, 2017, with an official opening night of April 20, 2017. Rehearsals begin one year from today.

Says the show’s composer Jerry Herman: “Many times through the years I’ve been asked about bringing back Hello, Dolly! – and it has always been, ‘Who would be my dream Dolly?’ – and though I’ve had literally dozens of names tossed at me, I knew that we needed more than just a wonderful singer or a wonderful actor, so I held on to the hope that she would also be a distinctly original persona. Who is out there that has the necessary stature, warmth, the incredible talent and ability, and especially the singular, outsized personality that I was looking for in a 21st Century Dolly? Only one person: Bette Midler. Only Bette could bring Dolly brilliantly back to ‘the lights of 14th Street!’”

Midler made her Broadway debut in the original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in 1967. Throughout the 1970’s, she brought to Broadway three well-loved concert events: Bette Midler (in 1973, and for which she received a special Tony Award), Bette Midler’s Clams on the Half Shell Revue (in 1975), and Bette! Divine Madness (in 1979).

In 2013, Midler returned to the Broadway stage, after a nearly 40-year absence, to star in the one-woman play I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers in which she played the legendary Hollywood agent.

This new production of Hello, Dolly!, the first new production of this classic musical to appear on Broadway since it opened more than fifty years ago, will have at its helm Jerry Zaks as its director, and will feature choreography by Tony Award-winner Warren Carlyle. The new Dolly! will pay tribute to the original work of legendary director/choreographer Gower Champion, which has been hailed both then and now as one of the greatest stagings in musical theater history.

Carol Channing was Broadway’s original Dolly and won a Tony for the role. She starred in several revivals and national tours and is most closely identified with the role even if Barbra Streisand was given the lead in the film version in 1969.

Broadway’s other most famous Dollys include Ethel Merman and Pearl Bailey.