Hello Dolly!

With its near sixty year age, ‘Hello, Dolly!’ is unsurprisingly very much in the spectacular Broadway/Hollywood tradition. Given its setting at the turn of the 19th/20th century, it is also difficult to conceive of any alternative style of presentation. This DAODS production was thankfully respectful of that tradition but kept things moving at a much faster pace by engineering scene changes without closing tabs and maintaining the action over those changes. Visually, the impression was sumptuous, with principal characterisation well developed, ensemble and dance choreographed to best exploit all the available talent. Turning the lighting up a notch on occasion would however have done wonders in ensuring that all that imaginative and well-drilled work was seen to best advantage. ‘Hello, Dolly!’ has a terrific score and the company worked extremely hard to sell it to a rightly very appreciative audience.

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