Every ten seconds in this world, someone dies because of alcohol, a baby is born and a new production opens of Hello, Dolly. Or at least it seems that way. The 1964 musical with songs by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart was based on Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker and if there's a stage anywhere near you, Hello, Dolly will eventually be on it.
The most prominent production of it in recent years was on Broadway in 2017. It starred Bette Midler as Dolly Levi and David Hyde-Pierce as Horace Vandergelder. I didn't see it but my friend Shelly Goldstein did.
Bette and David did it for eleven months, after which they were replaced by Bernadette Peters as Dolly Levi and Victor Garber as Horace Vandergelder. My friend Shelly Goldstein didn't see this production but I did. I thought it was quite wonderful even though I'm not wild about the storyline of this play. But the sets, costumes and staging were wonderful, Bernadette was great and Mr. Garber was even better.
They did it for several months and then Bette and David came back for the final six weeks. The show then closed and soon after, its sets, costumes and some of the cast were sent out on a national tour which has been working its way around the country. This evening, it did its last show in Los Angeles and it opens Tuesday in San Francisco and plays there for a month before moving on to Las Vegas. After that, it moves on to Des Moines, Minneapolis, Nashville, Columbus and other towns. The schedule can be found here and the word is that additional stops will be added later.
In its closing days in L.A., Shelly Goldstein and I went to see it with its current cast — Betty Buckley as Dolly Levi and Lewis J. Stadlen as Horace Vandergelder. Shelly felt that the production wasn't quite as strong as the one with Bette Midler and I felt it wasn't as wonderful as what I saw with Bernadette Peters. In fairness though, I should report that the audience couldn't have cheered and applauded her any more than they did. We also thought the staging, costumes and sets were superb and we both thought that Lewis J. Stadlen was phenomenal.
Fairness also requires that I reveal that we know Lewis J. Stadlen. Shelly and I and a few other friends took him to lunch two weeks ago. We did not love his performance because we took him to lunch. We took him to lunch because we've always admired the guy and felt he was the best thing in any show that was lucky enough to have him. (He was Groucho in the original Minnie's Boys in 1970 which I never saw but wrote about here.)
Critics who never ate with the man have also raved about him in this production. He gets every single laugh it's possible to get in Hello, Dolly as well as a few that did not seem possible. His role is so focused and firmly defined that he helps hold together what I still think is a pretty weak, not-entirely-coherent book.
None of this should dissuade anyone from going to see it. It's an especially good show to get a young person interested in musical comedy because it has great dancing, great art direction and great songs. Here's a commercial for the company's stopover in Denver. And Lewis Stadlen alone is worth the price of admission…
