Review Roundup: Did Imelda Staunton Delight in HELLO, DOLLY! at The London Palladium?

Multi-Olivier and BAFTA Award-winning Imelda Staunton is back where she belongs in Hello, Dolly!.

Now open at The London Palladium for a limited summer season, this brand-new production re-unites Imelda with Director Dominic Cooke following the critically acclaimed Follies at the National Theatre. Joining Imelda are Andy Nyman, Jenna Russell, Tyrone Huntley, Harry Hepple and Emily Lane.

Meddlesome socialite turned matchmaker Dolly Levi travels to Yonkers, New York to find a match for the miserly, unmarried ‘half-a-millionaire’ Horace Vandergelder, but everything changes when she decides that the next match she needs to make is for herself.

With music and lyrics by the legendary Jerry Herman (La Cage aux Folles, Mack and Mabel, Mame) and book by Michael Stewart (42nd Street, Mack and Mabel, Barnum), Hello, Dolly! is one of the most iconic musicals of all time. Jerry Herman’s timeless score includes "Put On Your Sunday Clothes",  "Ribbons Down My Back", "Before the Parade Passes By" and of course, ‘Hello, Dolly!’

What did the critics think?

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan

Aliya Al-Hassan, BroadwayWorld: The lavish production reunites the inimitable Imelda Staunton with director Dominic Cooke, following the huge success of Follies at The National Theatre. Staunton plays the eponymous Dolly with a permanent twinkle in her eye as the mischievous matchmaker, showing incredible energy throughout. Her stage presence is wonderful and the role feels as though it was written for her; she is funny, dynamic and cheeky, yet full of genuine emotion and heart.

Alice Saville, The Independent: Director Dominic Cooke’s production is a lean mean entertainment machine – each half is a tight hour (a refreshing contrast to the more lumbering Barbra Streisand-starring 1969 movie version), kept moving by Rae Smith’s projection-filled set design and Bill Deamer’s appropriately high-spirited choreography. And although the show’s farcical climax in a hat shop feels less like a tight physical comedy set piece and more like a tipsy game of musical chairs, its larky approach can tumble away when required. When Staunton sits alone by lamplight to sing “Love, Look in My Window”, the whole story is illuminated by this insight into Dolly’s hidden loneliness.

Rachel Haliburton, The Times: Dominic Cooke’s production of Hello, Dolly! opens 60 years after the musical first hit Broadway during a time of political upheaval provoked by the continuing war against Vietnam. As Imelda Staunton triumphantly takes the lead role, it’s clear why the musical is such a tonic for turbulent times, with its bracingly salty wit balanced by the redemptive philosophy that everyone deserves a second chance.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: Staunton masters singing with feeling, never overacting or sentimentalising Dolly. Andy Nyman as Horace is wryly Scroogey, while Jenna Russell, as the story’s other humanely portrayed widow, hat-shop owner Irene Molloy, sings one of the most moving numbers of the night, Ribbons Down My Back. It is filled with the yearning of a woman who has not quite given up on romance, poetic without being schmaltzy.

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times: Director Dominic Cooke, who last worked with Staunton on a matchless staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, throws everything at it the vast Palladium stage can handle, relishing the chance to savour musical comedy at its bonkers best. So we have comic nonsense in a hat-shop, marching bands, swirling crowds and an army of spinning waiters brandishing extravagant, quivering desserts and silver salvers as they pirouette around (choreography from Bill Deamer). Rae Smith’s lovely sets whisk us through 19th-century New York using a moving backdrop of old photographs and full-sized models of trams and locomotives.

Lucinda Everett, WhatsOnStage: Designer Rae Smith orchestrates a blistering run of costume changes, and a set that at times beggars belief. Buildings and train stations fly in, shops whizz slickly into place on a conveyor belt, which also allows the cast to walk for mile after imaginary mile, as New York’s buildings and skies move past them on a video backdrop. The world feels expansive. Not to mention expensive. An opulent restaurant with a sweeping staircase appears. A steam train rolls onto stage (really) as if the Palladium’s wings are one great Mary Poppins carpet bag. It’s the kind of set that could upstage a lesser cast.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: Even as she’s singing “wow wow wow fellas”, you half-register that, actually, for all its irresistible charm, “Hello, Dolly!” offers only an intermittent wow-factor, and nothing quite as career-defining for the star as her tour de force a decade or so ago in Sweeney Todd. Cooke taps the pathos of the character’s situation – presenting her initially alone, tidying clothes into a wardrobe – before hurtling her into a moving bustle of citizenry, as she gaily doles out calling-cards; later, she sings Look, Love in My Window.

Time Out, Time Out: I'd say Staunton’s stronger and more age appropriate casting for Dolly than Barbra Streisand was in the 1969 movie. Petite, rosy-cheeked and indomitable, Staunton doesn't have Streisand's clarion pipes or goddessy physicality, or indeed the gorgeous jammy-voiced assistance of Louis Armstrong. But she crushes it as Dolly, making her a puckish nemesis who wreaks havoc in the boring life of Horace Vandergelder, stingy ‘half millionaire’, and oppressor of nieces and clerks. Staunton is a consummate actress who can also sing, not the other way around. The farcical, goofy storyline bustles and hustles constantly, but Staunton cuts through the noise, not with front and brass but with touching subtlety and emotional depth.

Adam Bloodworth, City A.M.: It’s best when it bolts along and veers away from sentimentality, and Staunton gets this: she always has a glint in her eye that shows she’s in on the joke. Oh, and she can sing! She belts the titular track in act two in a way that makes you feel perplexed as to why she hasn’t done much more of this before. She’s always seemed a kind woman in press interviews and her warm nature is the perfect match for the soft empath Dolly. Barely off stage for over two hours, Staunton is after as much fun as the audience, and always smiling in our direction in a way that is saying “this is ridiculous, isn’t it?” without actually saying it. (Her husband, the actor Jim Carter, was in tears in the stalls watching on opening night.)

Holly O'Mahony , The Stage: Hello, Dolly! review“Victorious turn from Imelda Staunton” REVIEWS JUL 19, 2024 BY HOLLY O'MAHONY THE LONDON PALLADIUM Imelda Staunton in Hello, Dolly! at The London Palladium. Photo: Manuel Harlan Imelda Staunton in Hello, Dolly! at The London Palladium. Photo: Manuel Harlan “Hello, Imelda!” Staunton is spectacular as widowed matchmaker Dolly Levi in Dominic Cooke’s long-awaited revival Facebook Twitter LinkedIn bookmark_border Sparkling with joie de vivre and running on a boisterous charm that prevents this safe but loveable production becoming overly sentimental, Dominic Cooke’s revival of Michael Stewart (book) and Jerry Herman’s (music and lyrics) 1964 musical about a widowed matchmaker who returns to New York City on a second wind marks the first time the show has been seen in London since Timothy Sheader’s polished 2009 production at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. But “look at the old girl now, fellas”, because Cooke’s take is a far grander affair that stylistically leans into the story’s dawn-of-the-20th-century setting and is driven by a victorious turn from musical theatre heavyweight Imelda Staunton as Dolly Levi. The story follows its professional meddler from the small town of Yonkers, where she’s been on a mission to find a suitable wife for the miserly half-a-millionaire Horace Vandergelder (a socially awkward and tetchy Andy Nyman), to New York City. Continues... RELATED TO THIS REVIEWHello, Dolly! praised for majority female orchestra Hello, Dolly! praised for majority female orchestra How Hello, Dolly! set the template for leading ladies in musical theatre How Hello, Dolly! set the template for leading ladies in musical theatre But the show is essentially built around its second act title number, and a rosy-cheeked, mischievously likeable Staunton saves her best for it: gliding like royalty down the gilded staircase (made iconic by the Barbra Streisand-starring film) of the Harmonia Gardens restaurant and affectionately ‘wow wow wow-ing’ to waiters in velvet jackets as they coo “Hello, Dolly” back at her. If it’s a visual replica of the movie’s sequence, it’s also a spectacular scene in which Rae Smith’s set and costumes, Bill Deamer’s choreography and the performances all dazzle.

Marianka Swain, London Theatre: Hello, Imelda! It’s so nice to have her back where she belongs. And we’ve had quite the wait for the actress’s triumphant return to musical theatre: Dominic Cooke’s lavish revival of Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s witty 1964 Broadway favourite Hello, Dolly! was delayed four years by the pandemic. Yet somehow that makes this success all the sweeter, and contributes to an extraordinary production that is every bit as moving as it is utterly spectacular.

David Nice, The Arts Desk: Staunton even tunes in to a touch of Streisand’s nasal quality for sentiment, but otherwise makes the role her own special creation (the "Parade" song, wonderfully done, is the equivalent of "I Am What I Am" in La Cage aux Folles). Is there any actor who can spin straw into gold quite the way she does with the dialogue? Timing is perfect, especially when Dolly is at her most pattery; who wouldn’t buy what she has to offer?

Nick Curtis, Evening Standard: Staunton is all brightness and bounce in the introductory Just Leave Everything to Me. She’s wry and tart in the witty Motherhood March and Dancing, quietly touching in the solo Look, Love in My Window. Then she unleashes the full-on, mind-altering force of her voice in the anthemic Before the Parade Passes By, in the title song, and in the swaggeringly flippant So Long, Dearie.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Staunton, on the other deft hand – as well as on director Dominic Cooke’s deft hand – for the most part takes an unmissably different approach. Her Dolly is understated. This Dolly’s major characteristic is smiling benevolence. It’s her matchmaker’s aggressive sincerity that earns this Dolly’s exclamation point. Only in the second act, when she determines to land moneybags Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman), he of the vast Yonkers geld, does she throw subtlety to the wings and make like a marauding golddigger.

Average Rating: 85.0%