Ever the ingenue

How fitting that Bette Midler comes on stage during her first tour in four years all dressed up like little Shirley Temple, curls and all, riding an amusement park carousel pony.

Her concerts have always been about being young at heart, but never more so than Sunday at the Arrowhead Pond in a show that, in typical Midler fashion, was both savagely funny and disarmingly tender.

When this creative spark plug arrived on the scene three decades ago, she was in her 20s, but she seemed much older because so much of her pop-culture vision was drawn from earlier eras.

During a time when most of the pop-rock world was taking itself awfully seriously after the heady social change of the ‘60s, Midler became one of our most unlikely stars by using everything from ancient vaudeville routines to an old Andrew Sisters song to remind us that no generation is free from human foibles.

By getting us to laugh at ourselves, her message, ultimately, was as liberating as a great Bob Dylan song.

At 58, Midler still uses many of the same old-school theatrical devices and even the old songs, but she does so in ways that showcase more than ever the sweet innocence and optimism of youth. It’s at once her most ambitiously staged yet most intimate arena performance.

When she sang one of her earliest hits Sunday, the fun-packed “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” she moved about with more energy and desire than she did when the song was a hit in 1973. The audience could make the comparison when old footage of her doing the same song was shown on overhead video screens as she performed it.

In another engaging moment, Midler seemed more vulnerable and girlish than ever when singing along, via video clip, with Mr. Rogers, the comforting children’s TV show host who died a year ago this week.

Don’t think, however, that Midler has lost her satirical bite. During the 2 1/2-hour show, which moves to Staples Center tonight, Midler touches on topics ranging from President Bush and Rush Limbaugh to Viagra and gay marriages.

The subjects may be predictable, but her takes are sharp and fresh. Who ever thought disco would be replaced by matrimony, she joked at one point.

She also has fun with her own trashy image, boasting that she opened the door for singers with bad taste, then complaining wryly that she hasn’t gotten even one thank you note from Christina Aguilera or Janet Jackson. She also makes fun of her own misadventures, employing Judge Judy in a video sequence that finds the TV jurist scolding Midler for her failed 2001 attempt at a TV sitcom.

In keeping with the youthful, nostalgic theme of the “Kiss My Brass” tour, the stage setting conveys the festive nature of a Coney Island fun zone, but it could really be anyplace where young hearts run free.

For all the emphasis on humor, including more of those bawdy, Sophie Tucker-style jokes, Midler and her aggressive 10-piece band spend an equal amount of time on music. Which is a mixed blessing.

Midler isn’t a classic pop singer. She has vocal power but not a lot of nuance. There is a stiff harshness to her voice that limits her effectiveness on songs that require more measured treatment, such as “Skylark” and “Hey There.”

She is most effective when she employs her instincts as an actress to pump tunes into larger-than-life exercises, as on “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and her passionate, foot-stomping version of the R&B; standard “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

After intermission, Midler introduced us to her most inspired creation: Delores DeLago, the free spirit who won’t let the fact that she’s a mermaid stop her from pursuing her show-biz goals. “I may be a freak,” she says when her future looks darkest. “But I’m a freak with a dream.”

When she then jumps into her electric wheelchair and spins around the stage at full speed, it’s one of the most irresistible moments in pop culture. She and her three singers-dancers, the Staggering Harlettes, then take their theater revue to Broadway and deliver a hit, thanks to such customized tunes as the cornball “Everything’s Coming Up Fishtails.”

After the theatrics, Midler focuses on her inspirational hits, including “From a Distance” and “Wind Beneath My Wings.” While those songs are too melodramatic for some tastes, “The Rose” is, after all these years, her defining number.

Though written for a film patterned loosely after tragic rocker Janis Joplin, the song, with its promise of a comforting spring after a troubled winter, serves as the ideal expression of the innocence and hope that underlie Midler’s every move on stage.

In introducing the number, she personalizes it by alluding to the nation’s own troubled winter and longed-for better days to come. It was a reminder that she, too, is a child of the ‘60s, and that for all the lighthearted times she has given us, she wants us to remember the ideals of that time.

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Bette Midler

Where: Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A.

When: Tonight at 8

Price: $46.75 to $259.25

Contact: (213) 742-7340