No one expected anything else from Imelda Staunton.
Vera Drake, who recently earned an Emmy nomination for her role as the Queen in The Crown, is nothing short of stunning once again – this time as the tireless matchmaker Dolly Levi in Dominic Cooke’s heartwarming revival of Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical.
At 5 feet 10 inches in her stocking feet, Staunton has the musical prowess of a nuclear power plant.
If she didn’t keep some of her money, she’d definitely blow the Palladium’s fuse box. She’s a perfect match for Dolly, in other words: a one-woman dating app in a bodice and bustle, making her way through 1890s New York.
Michael Stewart’s story remains a mixed bag, however: a Dolly mix of pastel-colored goo with synthetic flavors. But thanks to Imelda, who cares?
As widow Levi, she’s an all-consuming control freak who chats 19 times a year to keep anyone from getting a word in edgewise as she matches them with their perfect partner.
Imelda Staunton, who recently won an Emmy nomination for her role as the Queen in The Crown, is nothing short of astonishing again – this time as the incorrigible matchmaker Dolly Levi in Dominic Cooke’s warm-hearted revival of Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical
Theatre production Hello, Dolly! at the London Palladium. Pictured: Emily Lane, Tyrone Huntley, Jenna Russell and Harry Hepple
At 4 feet 10 inches tall and carried in her stocking feet, Staunton has the musical prowess of a nuclear power plant
Only now does she have her eye on Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman): a grumpy, greedy ‘half-millionaire’ from the ‘farm town’ of Yonkers.
Full of jokes and hard truths, Dolly also contributes to the romantic emancipation of Horace’s downtrodden employees, Barnaby and Cornelius (Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple).
They are paired with a Manhattan milliner (Jenna Russell) and her assistant (Emily Lane), and it all leads to a series of delightfully false set-pieces.
In Before The Parade Passes By, Dolly’s quiet contemplation of her solitary existence culminates in a giant ticker-tape parade.
Her beloved reputation is celebrated with the cheerful title number at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant (famously performed with Louis Armstrong and revolving waiters in the 1969 film starring Barbra Streisand as Dolly and Walter Matthau as Horace).
Imelda Staunton bows to applause during the press night screening of Hello, Dolly!
Tyrone Huntley, Andy Nyman, Imelda Staunton and Jenna Russell bow to applause during the press night screening at The London Palladium on July 18
Husband and wife Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton attend the press night party after Thursday night’s performance
But there’s also a touch of sentimental sentimentality, with Horace’s now-lovelorn clerk Cornelius singing It Only Takes A Moment to free his beloved milliner Irene from prison. Bill Deamer’s choreography could do with the escalation of a cartwheel or tap-dancing routine, while Rae Smith’s stage design, which creates movement with a vast spinning scroll of architectural etchings of 19th-century New York, often feels strangely empty.
And Cooke could certainly make more of the restaurant’s Art Deco staircase, with two tables on either side awkwardly surrounded by red velvet curtains.
Staunton is now 68, and while it makes sense that her Dolly would be an older, lonelier matchmaker (as opposed to the film’s playful 27-year-old Streisand), Nyman’s chirpy Horace could use some of Matthau’s jawline and misanthropy.
Russell’s 58-year-old divorcee Irene adds a touch of Oedipus jazz by getting her tenacious claws into Hepple’s 33-year-old virgin Cornelius.
But none of that diminishes Staunton’s five-star performance – or detracts from a voice of smoke and sunshine, either in her torch song Love, Look In My Window or in her glorious, show-stopping title track. And she still does a fine bit of footwork in the dance routines.
She seems to enjoy chatting with both the actors and the audience, taking an infectious, childlike pleasure from her role and making this cheerful Dolly mix worth drinking.