Hello, Dolly sees Imelda Staunton rocking it again

When Dolly Gallagher Levi finally puts her mourning black into a wardrobe and prepares to return to life, the matchmaker and all-round, self-declared meddler sets in motion the events that first appeared in various 19^th-century works and then in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play The Merchant of Yonkers (later rechristened The Matchmaker for a revised production at the Edinburgh Festival in 1954) and then as a musical from composer and lyricist Jerry Herman, with a book by Michael Stewart.

As the show opens, Dolly is currently employed to look to find a new wife for Horace Vandergelder, a well-known “half-a-millionaire” who runs a horse feed business, but she intends to marry him herself, while also overcoming Vandergelder’s objections to his hysterical niece wedding an artist.

Add into the mix Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker, Vandergelder’s two woefully under-paid and over-worked clerks, who long for a day off and an adventure, together with New York milliner and widow Irene Molloy and her assistant, Minnie Fay,

This new production at the London Palladium has been long in the making, having been disrupted by COVID. Minor warning here – this review is going to involve more personal comment than I usually do – I hope it will be clear why.

I’m not even sure I’d seen the film at that stage, but in the mid 1980s, I was cast as Minnie Fay in what turned out to be a very expensive and ambitious – but very good – Morecambe Warblers’ production of the show. I loved it and apparently – thanks to a VERY good choreographer – I looked like I’d been dancing all my life!

I bought the cassette of the original, iconic Broadway production, with Carol Channing as Dolly. A few years ago, I shelled out for a very good vinyl copy of that soundtrack – which might convey something of how much this show means to me on a personal level.

When this production was originally touted, with Imelda Staunton in the lead, my reaction to the late Other Half was simply: ‘We’re going!’ Don’t get me wrong – there was no objection.

He’d seen and massively appreciated her in Gypsy and Follies.

But … the pandemic. When it was announced, late last year, that this would be going ahead, I had become, as Dolly and Irene, a widow. Like both of them, I am trying to work my way into creating a new life for myself.

I joined an email list just so that I could get priority booking (argh!). When booking opened, I spent a frankly daft sum of money on a ticket (I’m fortunate enough to be able to do that right now in my life).

Over the last week, on social media, I have even been doing the ‘x sleeps until’ – which I have never done before about anything. So I suspect that that is a big part of why, as the majority of the Palladium audience went wild this afternoon, I felt slightly underwhelmed. My expectations were far too high.

Director Dominic Cooke has made a point of emphasising the widowhood of both Dolly and Irene as serious and genuinely poignant – and that Herman did actually create shows about serious issues (any of us who are aware of Mack and Mabel know this). Since Hello, Dolly! is set at the turn of the 19/20th century, then we are also dealing with misogynistic attitudes and massive restrictions on women’s activities. Dolly and Irene work against those.

I think that my primary problem here is that Cooke’s decisions on giving it some genuine emotional heft are to be applauded, but it feels at odds with the level of slapstick farce so often evident. For me, it jarred. To be absolutely clear, the overwhelming majority of the audience was cheering and applauding throughout, at incredibly levels.

However, there were – even for me – serious goose-bumpy, fabulous moments: not least the opening of the overture, When the Parade Passes By and, of course, the title number, which does not disappoint.

But there is a question that arises as to how one melds the overt campness of the history of this fabulous show, with a more contemporary approach. Lest you don’t know – Danny La Rue played the lead in one British revival!

Just to note – Staunton is simply sensational as Dolly. And in one way, that’s part of the problem – because her character just has so much more nuance than any other.

I'd also add that Andy Nyman is very good as the utterly ridiculous Vandergelder, as is Jenna Russell as Irene. And they add to the nuance of Cooke's approach. The problem is, many of the other cast have been (presumably) directed in a very different way – un-nuanced slapstick – that feels like a massive conflict in approaches.

Oh – and the band is superb.

Hello, Dolly! is at the London Palladium until 14 September 2024