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Adapted from Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, our heroine, Dolly Levi, is a nosey but loveable matron from Yonkers, upstate New York. Still devoted to her deceased husband, Efron Levi, her mission in life is to sort the problems of everyone whose path she crosses. 

 

Busybody Dolly’s stock in trade is a deep bag from which she flourishes a vast range of business cards proclaiming her expertise in most aliments from varicose veins to her specialty – affairs of the heart.

 

We soon discover that her ultimate aim is to woo and marry the local, grumpy, half-millionaire grain merchant, Horace Vandergelder, (Allan Corduner). Her reason, she assures us, is simply to ensure funding for her ‘projects’ and only, of course, with her dead husband’s full approval.

 

The role of Dolly was originally written by Herman for Ethel Merman but was snapped up for both Broadway and, eventually, the West End by the redoubtable Carole Channing.

 

This Dolly Levi is played by the diminutive but charismatic Samantha Spiro, an eminently worthy successor to the towering Channing and even to superstar Barbra Streisand who starred in the 1969 film version.

 

Spiro’s character effortlessly manipulates and controls the stage throughout the evening, brilliantly supported by a faultless cast but notably Josefina Gabrielle as Irene Molloy and her sidekick Akiya Henry.

 

No one gets the better of this loveable Dolly. She even has the impeccable waiters at New York’s poshest restaurant swooning at her feet as they serenade her with the classic show stopping title number ‘Hello, Dolly!’

 

The combination of director Timothy Sheader and chorographer Stephen Mear is a match made in musical theatre heaven.

 

Their staging of ‘Before The Parade Passes By’, the poignant ‘It Only Takes a Moment’ and, of course, the exuberant ‘Hello, Dolly!’ are stunning.

 

We left the magical Regent Park Theatre with masses of feel-good factor.

 

The season is short so come rain or shine don’t let the Dolly parade pass you by.