If the Alliance Theatre's technically sophisticated "Maybe Happy Ending" represents the future of the genre, "Hello, Dolly!" shines a light on the showboat-size spectacles of yesteryear. She gnaws a turkey bone, drinks the gravy and inhales the potato puffs in a lunatic episode that brings back memories of Channing (whom I saw at the Fox in the mid-1990s).Īnyone looking for examples of the grand continuum of musical theater history has a couple of noteworthy bookends on Atlanta stages through Sunday. Indeed, “Hello, Dolly!” may be the only musical you’ll ever see in which a cook spearing a chicken is a precisely choreographed move.īut the real lulu is Dolly’s orgy of eating. As a prelude to Dolly’s big entrance, the ensemble, posing as waiters, chefs and the maitre d’hotel, runs circles around the place with champagne buckets, knives, trays of food, etc. In a company of strong singers, actors and dancers, Beeman really shines.Īnd then there’s that grand finale at Harmonia Gardens. By Dolly’s design, Vandergelder leaves in a huff, taking his (unshelled) chocolate-covered peanuts with him, and the penniless Cornelius and Barnaby are left to squire Irene and her assistant Minnie (Chelsea Cree Groen) for the night. In one terrific sequence, Vandergelder’s hooky-playing employees Cornelius (Daniel Beeman) and Barnaby (Sean Burns) find themselves hiding in closets and under tables when the old grump pays a call at Irene’s hat shop. She’s looking to find a companion “Before the Parade Passes By.” Though the story is cloaked in all manner of physical comedy and slapstick, it is essentially about finding an antidote to loneliness.Ĭarmello finds the poignance in Dolly, but what fun there is in the journey. I don't think I'm being too nit-picky to say that "Hello, Dolly!" may have to fine-tune, or scrape, this misogynistic ditty in future productions.ĭolly, for all her energy, has tired of her role as meddler extraordinaire with a business card for every occasion. Alas, what may have been an acceptable trope in the 1960s sounds jarringly incorrect in today's world.
Vandergelder's big number, "It Takes a Woman," boasts, "It takes a woman all powdered and pink/to joyously clean out the drain in the sink." And it goes downhill from there. As the story begins, the curmudgeonly and parsimonious old Vandergelder plans to marry Manhattan milliner Irene Molloy (the lovely Jenny Hickman, standing in for Analisa Leaming on Tuesday night), but Dolly has other plans.