I HAVE never counted Hello, Dolly! among my favourite musicals. I have spent too much of my life watching armour-plated American stars swanning down that Harmonia Gardens staircase at about 9.32pm to belt out the big number. However, Dominic Cooke’s new production at the London Palladium is sheer delight and one of the reasons is the magnetic presence of Imelda Staunton as the matchmaking Dolly Levi.
As we know from her awardwinning performances in Gypsy and Sweeney Todd, Dame Imelda’s great gift is that she brings all her acting skills to musicals. From her very first line—‘I’ve always been a woman who arranges things’—we see that this Dolly is a twinkling, bright-eyed, meddlesome busybody. Dame Imelda also makes it clear that she is looking for a second chance in life, which involves marriage to a wealthy Yonkers merchant.
Her triumph comes in her delivery of Jerry Herman’s title number. Instead of turning up at the Harmonia Gardens like a showbiz star, Dame Imelda treats the song as a reminder of past happiness and turns her affectionate gaze on each of the waiters whom she individually remembers. With its element of self-mockery on the line, ‘look at the old girl now, fellas’, the whole performance offers a mas- terclass in how to refresh and reimagine one of the best-known figures in musical theatre.
Credit also belongs to Mr Cooke as director, Rae Smith as designer and Bill Deamer as choreographer for their immaculate staging of the piece. Musicals can often seem mechanical, but I had tears of pleasure in my eyes during the number Put On Your Sunday Clothes: the reason was that it caught the sheer joy of a group of suburbanites boarding a steam train and relishing the glittering prospect of a day in New York. Much of the show is about motion, with a travelator carrying the cast in one direction as the sumptuous sets speed past them the opposite way.
Denne historien er fra August 21, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 21, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
