Hello Dolly!

Synopsis

The tale of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a self appointed matchmaker who seeks to inveigle into marriage a wealthy New York merchant, Horace Vandergelder.

Our Review:

11 August 2009

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...

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Latest User Review

rds - 28 August 2009:

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. ...

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