Well, Put On Your Sunday Clothes and get ready to have the night of your life – Hello, Dolly! is coming to the Adelphi Theatre in 2020. Absolute British icon Imelda Staunton will star in this classic Broadway musical as the titular lead, Dolly Gallagher Levi.
This marks the first revival of Hello, Dolly! in the West End since the summer of 2009, when Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre ran a production starring Allan Corduner and Samantha Spiro, who won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance.
Samantha Spiro at the Oliviers
Hello, Dolly! features music and lyrics from musical legend Jerry Herman (La Cage aux Folles, Mack and Mabel, Mame) and a book by Michael Stewart (42nd Street, Mack and Mabel, Barnum). The iconic score includes classics ‘Put On Your Sunday Clothes’, ‘Ribbons Down My Back’, ‘Before the Parade Passes By’, ‘Elegance’ ‘It Only Takes a Moment’ and – of course – ‘Hello, Dolly!’.
Written in 1964, Hello, Dolly! is based on Thornton Wilder’s 1938 farce The Matchmaker. The musical follows the unsubtle, oft-meddling socialite and force of nature Dolly Gallagher Levi. Usually a voracious matchmaker, the brassy widow is struggling to fund a wife for the miserly, grouchy ‘half-a-millionaire’ Horace Vandergelder. But it soon becomes clear that the next match she’s seeking to make is for herself.
Imelda Staunton has won a whopping three Olivier Awards for Best Actress in a Musical; for her role as the Baker’s Wife in Into The Woods in 1991, as Mrs Lovett in Sweeny Todd in 2013 and for her performance as Madame Rose in Gypsy. She won a fourth Olivier Award for Best Supporting Performance for A Chorus Of Disapproval back in 1985.
This production will re-unite Imelda with Director Dominic Cooke for the first time since the critically acclaimed Follies at the National Theatre. We can’t wait to see what musical magic they’ve created this time!