Through Sun 10/21
Dancing and comic acting stole the show opening night in the lavish Playhouse Square production of Hello Dolly! This now-classic 1964 musical celebrates big star presence (previous Dollys included Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, Bernadette Peters and Bette Midler). In this production, Tony Award-winning Betty Buckley plays the role of matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi.
Director Jerry Zaks uses original director/choreographer Gower Champion’s 1964 version as adapted by Warren Carlyle. It’s fabulous, with clever routines and great moves. Evidently, many who were in the Broadway cast (that show just closed last August) joined this tour. The result? A trained, talented ensemble that plays well together and creates dazzling, smooth transitions from one big song and dance to another.
The show’s set in Yonkers and New York City around the turn of the last century. The title character, matchmaker Dolly, introduces people wishing to marry to those she thinks “perfect” for them. (Today, the Internet would seriously reduce her business.) Buckley’s Dolly is fun, especially when she tosses an aside to someone sitting close to the stage. On opening night, the first show in the national tour, Buckley seemed uneasy at times (lines and pitch), but overall she made us love Dolly for her spirit and “can-do attitude.”
New Yorker Dolly’s got her sights on marriage with the wealthy and blustery Horace Vandergelder (Lewis J. Stadlen), although he doesn’t have a clue (at first), and to get her way she must travel to Yonkers with tagalongs, the artistic and idealistic Ambrose Kemper (Garett Hawe) and Vandergelder’s insecure daughter Ermengarde (Morgan Kirkner). The youngsters are in love, but daddy doesn’t approve.
While the opening scenes with Dolly in New York City and then Grand Central Station get the action moving, it’s not until we go to Vandergelder’s store and the set expands (with hidden cabinets that open, basements and more) that the dancing becomes an even more elaborate, ultimately including a large ensemble.
Much credit for new delightfulness should go to the appealing two clerks who help Horace run Vandergelder’s Hay and Feed Store in Yonkers. For clerks — well, really the two should try out for a musical comedy — they are overqualified for and a bit bored with the tasks Vandergelder assigns them. Both lively and likeable actors, Nic Rouleau (as Cornelius Hackl) and Jess LeProtto (as Barnaby Tucker), make dance moves seem simultaneously witty, funny, and compelling. Standout numbers for the duo (often accompanied by other ensemble members) include “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Takes a Woman.”
Things accelerate when the two young clerks create an excuse to leave Horace’s shop and go to New York City where everyone else has gone. While there, they visit Irene Molloy’s hat shop and meet Irene and Minnie Fay (a naive Kristen Hahn). Irene (a confident Analisa Leaming) discovers that maybe she doesn’t want the match Dolly had planned for her after all.
If you’ve seen it onstage before (many in the audience had; I hadn’t), you will applaud the familiar scene with Dolly at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant where she descends the stairs to the welcoming chorus of “Hello, Dolly!” It’s a big number in the traditional sense and there’s a feeling that they are really glad she’s back again.
The creative team for this first national tour (from the Broadway version) includes Santo Loquasto (scenic & costume design), Natasha Katz (lighting design), Scott Lehrer (sound design), Andy Einhorn (music direction), and Larry Hochman (orchestrations). Robert Billig conducted the orchestra.
Bottom Line: Hello Dolly!, like Les Miserables (next up at Playhouse Square, October 30 to November 18), is a festival featuring familiar delights with big numbers and fancy costumes. A nostalgic celebration of a world vanished, it avoids focus on personal and world problems seen in many contemporary musicals (Dear Evan Hansen, Come from Away). The problem here is a classic one: finding true love. That alone makes it a charming night of escape.
[Written by Laura Kennelly]
Cleveland, OH 44115