The Open Air Theatre's production of Hello Dolly! opened to critics this week (10 August, previews from 30 July), marking the show's first major London revival since 1982, when Danny La Rue played the title role at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
Taking on the eponymous match-maker this time round is Samantha Spiro (recently seen in Funny Girl at the Chichester Festival Theatre), in a production directed by Open Air artistic director Timothy Sheader and choreographed by Stephen Mear (the same team behind last year’s Whatsonstage.com Award-nominated revival of Gigi).
Jerry Herman's musical, which has a book by Michael Stewart, premiered on Broadway in 1964 and went on to scoop ten Tony Awards. It was famously made into a 1969 film starring Barbra Streisand in the title role.
Alongside Spiro, the Open Air cast also features Allan Corduner, Mark Anderson, Clare Louise Connolly, Oliver Brenin, Daniel Crossley, Josefina Gabrielle, Akiya Henry, Andy Hockley and John Stacey.
The overnight critics generally welcomed Hello Dolly! back to the London stage with open arms. Although some labelled Herman's match-making musical intrinsically “odd” and “strange” on the plot front, all were agreed that in Samanth Spiro, director Sheader has unearthed a “superlative lead”, more than capable of driving this “star vehicle” of a show. Her co-star Allan Corduner was generally deemed the perfect foil as the “tyrannical Vandergelder”, while Stephen Mear's “stunning” choreography was the stand-out feature in several critics' eyes. On balance though the evening, and its thunder, undoubtedly belonged to Spiro.
Simon Edge on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) - “Last year’s touring production starring Anita Dobson didn’t make it any closer into town than the New Wimbledon Theatre, so it’s a quarter of a century since Londoners have had the chance to see Hello Dolly! … At 41, Samantha Spiro is youngish for the title role - two years younger than Carol Channing when she first took it on, although a good bit older than the miscast Barbra Streisand in the movie. She doesn’t have Channing’s goofy rasp, but she does glow, just as the lyrics say she should … She’s paired against an equally powerful Allan Corduner as the tyrannical Vandergelder - although he has the taller order, to persuade us that the manipulative Dolly really might want to corner him into matrimony. With the voice of a cheese-grater and the teeth of a shark, he is chiefly attractive to her for his money: the odd charm of this show is its cheerful hard-headedness.”
Maxie Szalwinska in the Independent (three stars) - ““Samantha Spiro, fresh from her turn in Funny Girl has scary shoes to fill as the widowed busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. She wears them lightly. Small, neat and budgerigar-like, she nips around, sticking her beak into everyone's affairs … Spiro … works hard to make bossiness appealing, and her rendition of 'Hello, Dolly!' is like a warm embrace and wins us over. Jerry Herman's nostalgia-fest of a musical is big, brash and silly, forever teetering on the brink of saccharine. Timothy Sheader's staging offers a pure jolt of light relief, carefully building up audience goodwill with its pretty, sometimes striking stage pictures. Stephen Mear ringmasters the dancers well. There's a delightfully choreographed train sequence, and it's splendid when the whole cast parades down the aisles in their candy-coloured bodices and bowlers during the rousing 'Put On Your Sunday Clothes'.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (four stars) - “This is wholesome, feelgood entertainment. Cynics and firebrands should look elsewhere for their fun. What we get instead is a nostalgia trip, replete with upbeat tunes and spectacular millinery ... This, undeniably, is a star vehicle, and Samantha Spiro is that star. Her Dolly is spirited, puckish, brassy, intelligent. Her mezzo voice may lack a certain creaminess towards its bottom end, but this is a small complaint: she’s a delight to behold, possessing a luminosity that’s both delicate and strong. Among the support there is some overacting - a touch, indeed, of cartoonish flummery. Yet there’s plenty to relish ... Brisk, energetic and joyful, Hello Dolly makes a virtue of its limits. It’s an exuberant exhibition of elegant silliness, and in Samantha Spiro it has a superlative lead who deserves to be far better known”.
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (four stars) - “I find it hard to care what happens to Horace Vandergelder’s much-misused clerks when they go to New York to seek adventure and find romance in the shop of a milliner who 'hates hats'. But the bond at the show’s core is another matter … there were times when I wondered if a role played by Carole Channing, Ethel Merman and Barbra Streisand needed more brashness; but never mind, Spiro’s manipulation of Horace, the 'half-a-millionaire' she plots to make her second husband, is as hilarious as it’s quick-witted. It helps that he’s played by that fine actor Allan Corduner, who isn’t just 'rich, friendless and mean' but a gloriously grouchy blend of Dickens’ Scrooge, Molière’s Harpagon and our own PM … It was all too tuneful, too bright, too much fun to be stopped by English wetness.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (three stars) - ““Based on a play by Thornton Wilder, it remains an odd show … The standout feature of this production is, in fact, Stephen Mear's stunning choreography, and that is seen at its best in 'Put On Your Sunday Clothes', when the youths from Yonkers lead the ensemble in a wittily simulated trainride to the big city. Mear also cleverly invests the gallop by the scarlet-coated waiters at the Harmonia Gardens with a hint of heel-clicking Prussian militarism. This takes some of the pressure off Dolly Levi's over-hyped entrance and allows the admirable Spiro to focus instead on conveying a sparky young widow's need for wealthy companionship. Allan Corduner does all he can with the curmudgeonly Horace, and Josefina Gabrielle displays outstanding elegance as a sexually eager milliner. My heart, however, really goes out to the dance ensemble who, on a night of thin drizzle, trod the boards with fearless elan.”
Last year’s touring production starring Anita Dobson didn’t make it any closer into town than the New Wimbledon Theatre, so it’s a quarter of a century since Londoners have had the chance to see Hello Dolly!. That’s quite an absence, but the piece is still looking surprisingly swell considering it’s so ditzy and far-fetched. It’s nice to have this belting Broadway classic back where it belongs, albeit for a limited season.
Director Timothy Sheader has made no attempt to rethink or update Jerry Herman’s musical adaptation of a Thornton Wilder play, in which the talkaholic but loveable busybody Dolly Levi sets out to entrap into marriage her most curmudgeonly client, the Yonkers half-a-millionaire Horace Vandergelder.
Sheader and choreographer Stephen Mear make up for that caution with an evening of precision-controlled physicality in both dance and comedy – and sometimes both at once. The scene where Vandergelder searches a New York hat shop for two rogue male customers hiding in the display cabinets – not knowing that they are his own clerks – is brilliantly pulled off. And it’s not often that a piece of stage business – in this case the company turning themselves into a steam train using hat boxes for the engine and a smoking stove-pipe hat for the funnel – generates spontaneous applause.
At 41, Samantha Spiro is youngish for the title role – two years younger than Carol Channing when she first took it on, although a good bit older than the miscast Barbra Streisand in the movie. She doesn’t have Channing’s goofy rasp, but she does glow, just as the lyrics say she should. With shining cheeks on top of a permanent, happy beam, she exudes the charisma that makes Dolly such an unexplained hit with the tap-dancing waiters at New York’s swanky Harmonia Gardens restaurant (the location of the ever-wonderful title number). And while she is physically small, her voice is big enough to fight an overhead helicopter – one of the occupational hazards of Regent’s Park – and win.
She’s paired against an equally powerful Allan Corduner as the tyrannical Vandergelder – although he has the taller order, to persuade us that the manipulative Dolly really might want to corner him into matrimony. With the voice of a cheese-grater and the teeth of a shark, he is chiefly attractive to her for his money: the odd charm of this show is its cheerful hard-headedness.
Conventional romance is confined to the younger roles, and Daniel Crossley and Josefina Gabrielle are perfectly matched as the stir-crazy clerk Cornelius Hackl and the frustrated milliner Irene Molloy. The antidote to bland male leads, he looks like the cat that got the whole creamery when he wins his girl; while her classy poise is spiced with fascinatingly scary eyes. Akiya Henry is entertainingly angular and nervy as the milliner’s maid Minnie, while Annalisa Rossi has a ball as Ernestina, Vangelder’s rough-as-sandpaper early-evening date.
Sheader’s unpretentious production, designed by Peter McKintosh around a plain wooden rotunda, could have been staged at any time over the last four decades. It’s an “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach which is vindicated by the crisp verbal and physical comedy he elicits from the work. Hello Dolly! may require a major suspension of disbelief, even by the standards of musical theatre, but it’s more than just a glorious staircase number, endlessly reprised.
I was lucky the night I went.....NO RAIN...the actors deserve medals as they perform even if it does! I saw a production of Dolly at The Shakespeare festival in Stratford, Ontario a few years ago with Lucy Peacock playing Dolly and with an Irish accent...well she was a Gallagher....and it gave an interesting slant to the production. Samantha Spiro makes a good stab at it and it all looked lovely on the Open Air stage whilst Jerry Herman's score wafted us along - it brought a smile to the face. My favourite number, "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", got me tapping my toes. I now long for a big Broadway revival to see it given justice to. - rds
28 Aug 09
I hope this show stays löonger in a theatre in the west end. Harry Hirthe - Harald Hirthe
22 Aug 09
Timothy Sheader has brought high production values to the Open Air Theatre, with a remarkably good sound system and designs which make few concesssions to the setting. However, his programming is unexciting. Last year Gigi was an uninspired choice and if Hello Dolly was being staged indoors I wouldn't bother going. An enthusiastic cast give their all to a slight and ridiculous story, Josefina Gabrielle's pedigree shining through, and featuring in Daniel Crossley the sweatiest actor this side of David Haig. Samantha Spiro is not Carol Channing, for which we should be grateful, and manages to make the cynical, grasping Dolly Levi more sympathetic than she probably deserves. It's almost impossible not to enjoy a show in the park, but Sheader needs to risk more imaginative programming in future. - David Baxter
20 Aug 09
Brilliant acting, wonderful choreography, superb design, excellent costumes - a show to delight all on a late summer evening in Regents Park.All this and the wonderful tuneful music of Jerry Herman.What more can one ask for in an evening of musical theatre - truely delightful. - Anna
20 Aug 09
The most delightful evening! As I glanced around the audience last night it was obvious that everyone else was as transfixed as I was. Of course, it is necessary to suspend belief for a couple of hours to enter the world of Dolly Levi, but if you can't do that on a warm starry night in Regent's Park - you must be as grumpy as Horace Vandergelder. And those tap dancers - magnificent! - Susan
19 Aug 09
brilliant - sally
17 Aug 09
A great night at the park this year, rain or not.
The set and Stephen Mear dance and staging make this one of the very best park musicals.
Cast all round excellent and it would get a 5 star, much as i love Sam Spiro you can not get away from the fact the songs are not in her range, not belt or chills up your spine but boy she acts the part a dream.
Well done all. - jamie london
15 Aug 09
As the sun went down and the rain held off at last night's performance the Open Air Theatre was transformed into a wonderful visual treat created by the stunning lighting design. This whole wonderful production took us back to seeing a genuine star role and in Samantha Spiro a genuine star performance as Dolly Levi. Gloriously entertaining, inventful staging and sung like Jerry Herman would wish it to be sung. For me one of the highlights of 2009 and the title number was a glorious reminder of the Broadway we thought was all but gone. - Owen
13 Aug 09
Just a complete treat. Infectious joy and feelgood between cast and audience.Irresistible Samantha Spiro heads up a cast who deliver bigtime,against the backdrop of Regents Park midsummer magic.5 stars no question. - polly
12 Aug 09
As a previous writer says this is the best show at Regent's Park for years.I've been twice and will go again.Put on your sunday clothes before the parade passes by and say hello to Dolly.Wow.wow, wow - three cheers for a super, brilliant, magnificent Dolly ! - rob
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