Imelda Staunton in Hello, Dolly! at the London Palladium. Picture: Manuel Harlan
Hello, Dolly! continues at the London Palladium until 14 September 2024.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“You’re lookin’ swell, Dolly
I can tell, Dolly,
You’re still glowin’… you’re still crowin’
You’re still goin’ strong”
Yes, Dolly Levi is back in the West End and indeed looking swell. It has been a long wait, even longer as the return of Jerry Herman’s classic musical about the widowed New York matchmaker in need of love herself was delayed by the pandemic, but, boy, was it worth it!
Not necessarily for Michael Stewart’s rather ungainly story that’s not quite as funny as it thinks it is – it wouldn’t rank among my favourite musicals – but for what director Dominic Cooke, a nigh-faultless cast, Bill Deamer’s dazzling choreography and the choo-choo magnificence of a sidecar and steam train to set the piece firmly in its late 19th-century slot have done with it.
Its great star Imelda Staunton, a 4ft 11 pocket dynamo of a Dolly, holds the piece together with a powerhouse performance that’s full of nuance. She can go from bright and breezy to cutting and witty, from businesslike to lonely and wry to reflective in a heartbeat, and at 68 compared with Carol Channing’s 43 when she conquered Broadway in 1964 and Barbra Streisand’s 27 when she made the 1969 movie, Dame Imelda brings us a moving and more rounded Dolly.
Her treatment of the soulful ‘Love, Look in My Window’ and the impressive company number that ends Act I, ‘Before the Parade Passes By’, really touches the heart. Among all the wisecracks and putdowns, the front she puts on life, we feel the marriage broker’s loneliness. And when at the end she tackles the title song – so famous it hit No. 1 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart for Louis Armstrong in 1964 ending a 14-week Beatles run at the top – the packed Palladium audience went all the way with this little lady in glittering green in a prolonged standing ovation. And it’s not even the best song in Herman’s rich score.
Reuniting with Cooke – they worked together on Follies but this is her best role since her terrifying Mama Rose in Gypsy – no doubt this Dolly will be at the forefront when the awards are being handed out but, for me, the most thrilling moment comes from the wonderful Jenna Russell as Dolly’s milliner friend and fellow man-hunting widow Irene Molloy. Her ‘Ribbons Down My Back’ is pure heaven. What a voice.
Mean-spirited tightwad but rich Horace Vandergelder, the widowed hay and seed merchant up in Yonkers she first lines up for a client but grabs for herself, is played for all he is worth by Andy Nyman who shows his true misogynistic colours on ‘It Takes a Woman’ and ‘Penny in My Pocket’ but it is Horace’s badly-paid chief clerks Cornelius and Barnaby who lead the fabulous team number ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’ as they dress up to bring a bit of excitement into their humdrum world.
The dancing here and elsewhere is phenomenal with the acrobatic Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple the big scene-stealers in Act I and Cornelius (Hepple) leads Russell and the rest of the company in a memorable ‘It Only Takes a Moment’, a song of great beauty and an ode to love.
The 21-strong orchestra under the baton of Nicholas Skilbeck, also responsible for the new musical arrangements, copes boldly with Herman’s hummable music – a composer never short of a good ‘toon’ – and a big thumbs-up to Rae Smith’s inventive and eye-catching set and outfits, none more so than in the matching natty gear for ‘The Waiters’ Gallop’, a glorious team number that made full use of the Palladium’s vast stage.
Truly, Dolly is back where she belongs. It’s a bit of old-fashioned, schmaltzy fun, not too taxing on the brain, but this may just be the best-performed revival of it there has ever been. Only eight weeks to catch this sweet Dolly mixture, so don’t delay!
Jeremy Chapman
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