Open Air Dolly Says Hello to West End???

Timothy Sheader's sell-out Open Air Theatre revival of Hello, Dolly! could be set for a West End transfer at the beginning of next year, according to inside sources. Starring Samantha Spiro in the title role, the show opened to rave reviews earlier this month (See Review Round-up, 14 August 2009) and continues in Regent's Park until 12 September.

Jerry Herman's musical centres on widowed matchmaker Dolly Levi (famously played by Barbra Streisand in the 1969 film version) who takes a trip to Yonkers, New York to see prominent, wealthy bachelor Horace Vandergelder. While there, she persuades him, his two stock clerks, his niece, and her beau to go to New York City, where Dolly tries to arrange a match between the two clerks and the woman Vandergelder had been courting and her shop assistant over a hectic dinner.

And there are further whispers in the Regent's Park wind that Sheader is planning a production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods as his centrepiece for next year's Open Air season. Sondheim fans can catch it before then at the Landor Theatre, where the fairytale musical is being revived next month as part of the venue's 15th anniversary season (See News, 6 Aug 2009).

- by Rowena Betts - Theatregoer Reporter

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