Book: Michael Stewart
Music and Lyrics: Jerry Herman
Director: Dominic Cooke
Four years on and shows once cancelled by the pandemic are still slowly making their way back to the stage, and Dominic Cooke’s production of Hello Dolly! starring Imelda Staunton has finally opened, now at the London Palladium rather than the Adelphi Theatre where it was originally scheduled. Ready to chime with other summer musical nostalgic hits like the Barbican’s Kiss Me Kate and Fiddler on the Roof at Regent’s Park, Cooke’s heightened world of matchmaking may be a little broad for some while its somewhat old-fashioned quest for marital happy endings loses a bit of its sparkle on a larger stage.
Full-time fixer Dolly Levi can do anything for anyone, and since the death of her husband, it has become her life’s work to arrange everything from love affairs to dance lessons for the people she meets. Deciding she is ready to marry again, she sets her sights on grouchy hay merchant Horace Vandergelder and goes off to Yonkers to meet him before returning to New York to kibosh his plan to wed milliner Irene Molloy.
Cooke’s production has all the ingredients for a hit summer show with a classic larger-than-life Broadway story full of mix-ups and farcical resolutions, a zesty central character who steamrollers the plot, set pieces in multiple locations, extended dance sequences and several parallel love stories to root for. Cooke chooses not to reinvent it or attempt a contemporary revision of its themes as many of the Rodgers and Hammerstein productions of recent years have managed so well, but instead takes the line of 42nd Street and Anything Goes by leaning into the show’s original charm. Yet even with all of these elements in place Hello Dolly! lacks the pizazz of its equivalents.
Part of the issue is the relative scale of the staging which often looks lost on the vast London Palladium space with Cooke relying on rolling graphic design and flattened photographs of streetscapes as a backdrop but rarely fills enough of the stage to bring these characters and their scenarios to life. There is little sense of New York as a bustling city and too many songs take place on the overused treadmill that cuts across the stage the actors pretend to march along. Occasionally even Bill Deamer’s, otherwise excellent, choreography looks a little spartan against Rae Smith’s minimalist stage design.
Cooke and his team instead save all their magic for the title song in the middle of Act Two, an extended section set in Harmonia Gardens restaurant with a stunning backdrop and sweeping staircase, down which the heroine descends to much applause. This whole portion of the show, which includes Deamer’s impressive work on the Waiters Gallop number makes the kind of creative impact the audience has been waiting for, beautifully managed by Cooke who holds the intersecting story points and romantic arcs together here while providing plenty of wow factor – a liberal sprinkling of which is needed in the more anaemic parts of the show.
“Some people paint, some people sew, I meddle,” Dolly proudly declares to the audience at the start of this story and one of the major reasons to see Hello Dolly! is another towering performance from Staunton in the leading role who lands every comic moment and emotional beat. Staunton’s Dolly is a force of nature, running rings around Andy Nyman’s blustering Horace to deliver the star turn that keeps this show on the road. There’s great support from Jenna Russell as Irene – also a businesswoman who knows her own mind – while Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple play equally inept menfolk.
Hello Dolly! mostly revels in its silliness and enjoys its exaggerated style but by focusing on one big set piece, the show feels a little undernourished which lessens the impact of the rest of the story.
Runs until 14 September 2024
The Reviews Hub Score:
Undernourished
