Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Friday 5th August 2016
Thornton Wilder's play,
The Matchmaker, was the basis for the somewhat better known musical, Hello Dolly, which kept the script very close to that of the play but replaced parts of the witty dialogue with songs. Independent Theatre is presenting the original play, which had the audience in stitches at the hilarious lines and comical situations.
Wealthy Yonkers store owner and miserable skinflint, Horace Vandergelder, has decided to remarry. Dolly Gallagher Levi is the matchmaker who is to find him a wife, and he has already met the charming milliner, and widow, Mrs. Irene Molloy. Dolly, however, has other plans. When he heads to New York to meet Irene again, he leaves Cornelius Hackl in charge of the store, assisted by Barnaby Tucker, but they devise a plan to close the shop and spend the day in New York as well.
Horace's niece, Ermengarde, has fallen in love with an impoverished artist, Ambrose Kemper, and he has forbidden them to see one another again, packing her off to the home of Miss Flora Van Huysen in Brooklyn, to be delivered and kept there by his new employee, Malachi Stack, and a well compensated cabman named Joe.
By chance, Cornelius and Barnaby see their employer as they are looking around the city, and duck into a shop to hide from him, but it turns out to be Mrs. Molloy's hat shop, where they meet Irene and her pretty assistant, Minnie Fay. Unfortunately for them, Dolly is there with Horace especially to visit Irene at the shop, with the intention of his inviting her to dine at the Harmonia Gardens. Two young women, mistakenly thinking that the two youths are rich playboys, insist they be taken to that restaurant by them. Ambrose and Ermengarde have also chosen to eat there, as have Dolly and Horace, to introduce him to another prospective bride. You will need a ticket to the performance to find out what happens next.
The matchmaker of the title, the irrepressible Dolly Levi, is a hard role to fill but Artistic Director, Rob Croser, very wisely chose Bronwyn Ruciak for the role, and her performances are solid gold. Her theatrical career is filled with accolades for her superb work in one role after another. This is one more. Her Mrs. Levi is a study in character development, devious and determined and sufficiently larger than life to convince when she befuddles and overwhelms the unsuspecting Horace.
Croser, incidentally, has a very funny cameo role at the beginning of the play as Joe Scanlon, Vandergelder's barber, who is attempting to shave Horace while he rants and raves, and barks out orders.
Whoever plays Horace Vandergelder has to be as strong as the person playing Dolly Levi and, in this role, David Roach excels, adding one more to his impressive tally of successful performances. His Horace is a strong-willed man, bombastic and content with his money-making life, seeking a wife not for love and companionship but for financial reasons. Roach's descent into bewilderment, as everything around him suddenly appears to be not what he thought, is filled with humour.
Will Cox recently played Hamlet, and the role of the naïve and idealistic Cornelius Hackl could not be more removed from the Prince of Denmark. Cox shows that he is as adept at comedy as he is at tragedy as Cornelius breaks loose, determined that he and Barnaby will have an adventure, even if they never escape the store again. He is a good team with Kyle Hall, who plays Barnaby Tucker, the most junior employee in Vandergelder's store and semi-willing participant in the adventures devised by Cornelius. Hall's agility, physical theatre skills, and facial expressions ensure that the laughs keep coming.
Cornelius and Barnaby encounter the widowed milliner, Mrs. Irene Molloy, and her assistant, Minnie Fay, played respectively by Georgia Penglis and Grace Berwald. Milliners were, it seems, generally suspected of being a little less than completely respectable and the two are careful never to do anything at all out of order. Now, like the youths, they decide to break out just once. Penglis and Berwald are another great double act, with plenty of girlish giggles and plotting as they manipulate their panic stricken escorts.
Ermengarde and the man that she loves, the artist, Ambrose Kemper, are played by Emma Bleby and Stephen Schofield and hear is another pairing that works superbly. They give us well-rounded characters, unlike the film of the musical, where they are two-dimensional lightweights. Their characters grow as the play develops..
Pam O'Grady is the good-hearted Miss Flora Van Huysen, a confirmed romantic and, in O'Grady's hands, quite endearingly and as nutty as a fruit cake. The scene at her home at the end of the plays is all hers in a tour de force. She is well-supported by Maxine Grubel as her cook, bustling around in all directions.
Andrew Steuart's Malachi Stack fawns over Vandergelder and, one suspects, would have no qualms about carrying out the occasional unlawful errand, if the pay was acceptable. There are hints of Fagin lurking in Steuart's character. Matt Hein is a stalwart fellow as the cabman, convinced to accept money to help Stack, but clearly not ready to do anything too untoward. At the Harmonia Gardens there is one more put-upon young man in the waiter Rudolph, ordered around by Vandergelder, whose instructions are changed by Dolly, and pestered by the quartet for a table. Gus Pawlowski gives us a waiter who tends to look down on his customers in a very comical characterisation.
The stylish set, by Roach and Croser, effectively lit by Erik Strauts, changes smoothly between each of the four locations, and the costume team have done a sensational job, too. Independent Theatre productions always look good.
If you have only ever seen the musical, then here is your chance to find out how much funnier the play can be, especially with such a great cast under a highly experienced director. Treat yourself to a marvellous night out, and take your friends and family with you.
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