Imelda Staunton stars in the classic comedy musical Hello, Dolly! (Image: Getty) Imelda Staunton steps into the character immortalised by Barbra Streisand and proves there is nothing like a Dame for remaking a role in her own image. She joins the illustrious roll call of Dollys that include Carol Channing, Ethel Merman and Bette Midler. Director Dominic Cooke dials down the Jewishness of the Jerry Herman/Michael Stewart story of professional meddler and All-American matchmaker Dolly Levi who can sort out everyone’s love lives except her own.
The vast Palladium stage is dressed with huge sets that rise and fall, trolley cars and a steam train that chuffs from Yonkers to New York City and a moving video backdrop of streets and buildings. It is impressive but it occasionally dwarfs the performers, particularly in the first half. Dolly’s elaborate scheme to catch the rich Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman) and turn him from miserable miser to a man worth marrying while attending to his perpetually anxious daughter Ernestina (Jodie Jacobs, whose relentless crying is beyond irritating) and her beau keeps the motor running.
But it is the adjacent story of Vandergelder’s two young employees Barnaby and Cornelius (Tyrone Huntley & Harry Hepple, both superb) and their misadventures in the big city that snare the attention. function loadOvpScript(){let el=document.createElement('script');el.
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