It’s so nice to see Dolly back where she belongs – on the West End stage. 60 years on, she is still looking swell. For all those who love this great Broadway musical, the present revival starring Imelda Staunton, is not to be missed.
Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman’s legendary Hello, Dolly!, first performed on Broadway in 1964 and the winner of 10 Tony awards, is based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (1954), which was a reworking of one of Wilder’s earlier plays, The Merchant of Yonkers (1938), which was based on Johann Nestroy’s Einen Jux Will Es Sich Machen (1842), which, in its turn, was based on John Oxenford’s A Day Well Spent (1835).
Jerry Herman’s songs, tuneful and witty, are a delight. The score includes such numbers as Hello, Dolly!, It Takes a Woman, Put on Your Sunday Clothes, Before the Parade Passes By and It Only Takes a Moment.
Dominic Cooke directs. Bill Dreamer choreographs. Rae Smith’s set and costumes are very colourful and stylish. The moving New York cityscape on a huge screen, which takes up the whole back wall, gives the show its momentum.
Dolly Gallagher Levi, the matchmaker, is one of the great musical comedy roles, and Imelda Staunton, following in the steps of such luminaries as Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, scores a big success.
In the 1880s Horace Vandervelde, a mean-minded, grouchy elderly store-owner, wants to get married. He employs a matchmaker, an impoverished Irish widow of a Jewish husband, who has matrimonial designs on him herself.
There is a great comic scene when Imelda Staunton and Andy Nyman, who plays Horace Vandervelde, are sitting together in a restaurant. Horace is absolutely 100-percent certain that the last woman in the world he is going to marry is Dolly Levi, but then, poor chap, he doesn’t know Dolly Levi.
The rousing title song, one of the great showstoppers of all time, is given a big build up with a magnificent staircase and a host of dancing waiters, long before Dolly arrives on the scene. There’s no catwalk and no swaying arms, Deamer’s choreography is totally fresh.
Wow, wow, wow, fellas! Look at the old girl now, fellas!! You are looking swell, Imelda Staunton!
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