Wow, wow, wow, fellas! Look at the old girl now, fellas!! You are looking swell, Imelda Staunton!
It's so nice to see Dolly back where she belongs—on the West End stage. 60 years on, the show is still looking swell. For all those who love this great Broadway musical, the present revival is not to be missed.
Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman's legendary musical, 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).
The story is set 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.
It was seeing Annie Get Your Gun as a child and hearing Ethel Merman belting out the songs which inspired Jerry Herman to be a composer and lyricist. The songs, tuneful and witty, are a delight and not just “Hello, Dolly!” but also such numbers as "It Takes a Woman", "It Only Takes a Moment" and the great finale to act one, “Before the Parade Passes By".
Dominic Cooke directs. Bill Deamer choreographs. Rae Smith’s set and costumes are very colourful and stylish. The travelator and the moving New York cityscape on a huge screen, which takes up the whole back wall, give 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 (the definitive Dolly), Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, scores a big success on her own terms.
There is a great comic scene when 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.
Jerry Herman is one of the Broadway musical’s greats, and there will always be revivals of Hello, Dolly, and, of course, the best of times La Cage aux Folles. But when will someone risk reviving Mack and Mabel, Herman’s own favourite show?