The piranhas of the New York press proved to be a cold fish audience at a preview of Bette Midler’s “Clams on the Half Shell Revue.” It was a crowd that I would not care to face if I were hitting the stage of the Minskoff Theatre with a “comeback” at stake. There was no rushing the stage, no anticipatory laughter, none of that audience sweetening on which Midler’s particular act has always depended.

The Revue is essentially not much different than a musical comedy like “Sweet Charity,” except that it has a core of burlesque in which many recent musical forms and events are reviewed and renewed through adaptation of Midler’s peculiar gifts. Actually the Revue resembles those Summer Camp shows you once gave at Camp Tamarack or Camp Pokagon or wherever. I am not talking about “camp” Here, not in the sense that it is usually applied to Midler. I arri talking about the breezilyamateurish segues (credit director Joe Layton), the youthful restylings of stardards from various genres (from a samba-ed “Strangers in the Night” sung into a juke box to Guest Star Lionel Hampton’s marimba treatment of “A Day in the Life” to Midler’s driving version of Bowie’s “Young Americans”), and that peculiar feeling of summer camp children performing for their parents: I just wanna be loved. Aren’t I cute?