Hello Dolly! @ The London Palladium
And hello Imelda Staunton. In this charming, opulent, romantic production, you can have your chicken and eat it! Elegantly, ofcourse…(For there’s also a trolley car and steam train on stage too!) Just put on your Sunday clothes…and go!
Delightful, charming, romantic, joyous, heart firmly on its sleeve and splendidly vintage (without vintage values), we follow Dolly Levy (Imelda Staunton), a match-making widow. Neatly together in a fashion forward ladies suit, she has a card for every occasion — and a solution. She’s also about to make her ultimate match, with wealthy curmudgeonly store owner Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman). Only he’s got designs on hat store proprietress and widow Irene Molloy (Jenna Russell). (Having seen Jenna Russell as Mrs ‘Arris, it’s fabulous this time to see her get the glamour — dresses, hats with ribbons down her back and a swelligent time).
In Vandergelder’s seed and hay store are his two apprentices, Cornelius Hackl (Harry Hepple) and Barnaby Tucker (Tyrone Huntley) fermenting revolution and longing to break out of Yonkers and see New York (but without carrying a cake round it with strangers). Aided by serendipitous Dolly’s tip-off, they stake out the hat shop where all the single ladies who make their dollars are — and pretend to be fascinated by hat purchases and artfully arranged à la mode displays. Only this turns into a farce ‘cos their employer Vandergelder turns up a-courting too! Wonderfully comic Minnie Fay (Emily Lane) has to deal with all of this as Mrs Molloy bundles her hidden men into wardrobes, under tables and behind the till. Out of sight, though not out of mind.
Tyrone Huntley is wonderfully wide-eyed and charmingly naive as Tucker, Harry Hepple dashingly romantic as Hackl and it’s lovely to see their romances with Minnie and Irene blossom. Jenna Russell sings beautifully as Irene and thoroughly convinces as a widow throwing caution to the wind, putting on a decorous hat with long ribbons and charging after younger and poorer Hackl, rather than socially approved, blustering Vandergelder. But first they need to learn how to dance — which request Dolly Levy obliges. Barnaby Tucker and Minnie dance up a storm — but then everyone does!
If you’re looking for song and dance, then this is your show. There’s a fabulous swishy number as everyone struts around in their Sunday clothes; then they learn to dance; then there’s more swishing in ‘Elegance’ as cash-strapped Tucker and Hackl convince their ladies that walking is what the very best in society are doing. The waiters leap around as the couples and a mis-behaving Vandergelder sneak in and out of curtained booths. I hadn’t realised, but Dolly is first pictured putting her husband’s suit tenderly into storage. She returns for her big moment, ‘Hello Dolly’, in glamourous green, to the restaurant which they used to frequent — and now where everyone else is. Somehow, despite all the waiters capering about, everyone gets to eat — Dolly eats a very expensive chicken dinner and encouragingly forces grumpy Vandegelder to eat his beetroot!
What I didn’t expect was a parade — with magnificent banners, a whole host of marching industries, a period-appropriate majorette and well, spectacular spectacular. It was really something, all of them marching proudly on stage, brandishing big fringed banners — and heaps of civic pride.
Vandergelder’s comical daughter, a kind of perennially weeping Barbie, gets to be engaged to her artist sweetheart, despite fatherly objections. (Thanks to Dolly). They then take dancing lessons (courtesy of Dolly), to do something useful and purposeful, and also end up at the restaurant in a dancing competition. Whilst this begins as a high-class event, it soon descends into a riot — look away if you don’t want to see a cooked lobster used as a weapon. Somehow in all the madness, wallets are swapped — and the couples gain Vandergelder’s gold — he merely gains their moths, a button, an unfulfilled wish to see a whale and an unpayable bill! Deserted and somewhat despised by his dinner date (another Dolly set-up), Vandergelder begins to reflect that perhaps Dolly is the one for him after all…
Only, during her ongoing heart-to-hearts with her deceased husband, she is no longer so sure — and his shop has a rival from his former apprentices! Dolly will now come into her own as a super industrial relations negotiator…
I loved the sweeping art nouveau staircase into the restaurant, the cast leaping onto a train or passing by in a trolley car. Photographic sketches in the background gave a sense of passing through place, as did a moving walkway through the middle of the stage. The only bit that didn’t convince for me was the wedding scene where everyone popped in neons and lurid colours not dreamt of by aniline dyes. I’m not sure why Hackl and Irene got to marry, but not Tucker and Minnie. I feel like they were robbed, although they made the most of their comedic and stupendous dancing moments. I hope Tucker does get to see the blue whale someday. Hackl did begin to annoy me (hackles rising, no doubt) as he was constantly taking Tucker’s carefully saved money without allowing him to choose what they did with it. Vadergelder’s daughter only seemed to have the one pink dress — the old skinflint! Nevertheless, this was all Dolly’s moment — ‘HELLO!’ — this time in red, and a chance for Vandergelder’s day to be made.
Relish the big dance numbers and even bigger songs in this good-natured musical feast. Imelda Staunton makes Dolly both delightful and personable, but also fragile and vulnerable somehow. Loiter by the stage door and congratulate her at the end too!
Enjoyed reading this article?! Support my writing and further cultural adventures at: https://ko-fi.com/susanadventuresinculture
