Hello, Dolly! Reviews – Starring Imelda Staunton at the London Palladium

"Imelda Staunton delights in an old-fashioned extravaganza"

"Dominic Cooke delivers musical comedy at its bonkers best at the London Palladium"

"Staunton brings her own blend of splinter-sharp comic timing and emotional depth to the part, turning this ritzy-glitzy 1963 musical by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart into a genuinely touching tale. Staunton delights in the witty story of a gutsy, gifted woman outsmarting every man around her while also drawing out its poignancy. It’s an irresistible performance."

"Which is not to say this production doesn’t have glitz. 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."

"There’s nothing radical about the production: no revisionist rethink along the lines of the recent Oklahoma! directed by Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein. This is the sort of show in which emotions are dialled up to the max and the plot submits obediently to the rules of musical comedy. But Cooke and his cast find rich emotional truths and salient points in the story."

"Imelda Staunton will be talked about for years to come"

"Right here is a landmark theatrical production - do not miss it"

"I have never seen Staunton be better than this."

"The Palladium stage is cavernous, but the diminutive Staunton commands it utterly, whether in the big showpiece numbers or quiet and intimate moments in which she conveys an aching sense of poignancy and loneliness."

"If the first half of Dominic Cooke’s stylishly accomplished production makes us settle back happily to enjoy this unashamedly old-fashioned musical, the second half is startlingly, stratospherically fine."

"It is delightful to be able to say that right here is a landmark theatrical production that will be talked about for years to come. Don’t miss it."

"Imelda Staunton plays the matchmaker with stunning results"

"For all its Broadway dazzle and gags, this musical’s story of midlife bereavement and a second chance at love carries intense feeling"

"Dolly, portrayed with immense unshowy power by Imelda Staunton, is the meddling New York widow who resembles one of Shakespeare’s plotting mischief-makers."

"There is a screwball comedy feel to Michael Stewart’s book and Fred Astaire effects in Bill Deamer’s swooning choreography (which we sway along with). None of it is desperately original or complicated but the gags still zing, and together with Jerry Herman’s music and lyrics this production casts a magic spell. Dominic Cooke’s production is immaculately performed and slowly, beautifully life-affirming, with humour that reins in the schmaltz."

"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 joyous enough to be this year’s Crazy for You"

"Imelda Staunton turbocharges a wondrous West End revival"

"... Dominic Cooke’s stupendous production of Hello, Dolly!"

"Staunton’s star quality – she shines in her emerald ballgown like a queen descending the restaurant’s appropriately golden stairs – depends on her miraculous ability to stay genuine and intent, no matter how far-fetched the goings on around her. Naturalness and charm make her a joy to watch. She gives us a Dolly who exults in being herself, yet whose eyes fill with tears whenever she consults her dear departed philanthropist husband"

"Rae Smith’s set is sumptuous with vistas of late 19th-century New York, flower-laden wagons and even a steam train. A travelator allows the cast, when appropriate, to glide across the stage (the divine choreography is by Bill Deamer), but there are also thrilling moments when Dolly turns literally into a showstopper and everyone else is statue-still while she sings."

"Imelda Staunton is a dazzling Dolly in this musical spectacular"

"The Crown star is simply sensational in Hello, Dolly! She has the star presence, turbo-boosted energy and empathy you go to the theatre to see"

"Imelda Staunton is simply sensational in Hello, Dolly! She has the sort of star presence, turbo-boosted energy and empathy you go to the theatre to see. I’m sorry if it feels almost rude to get to the point so quickly, but however much producers have spent on the rest of this old-school musical spectacular — plenty, by the looks of it — this 68-year-old powerhouse is by far the biggest sell."

"She arrives to high expectations — a few Broadway-style whoops and claps from the crowd muffled her first line as she stepped on stage — and exceeds them."

"When she is off stage the story creaks. Staunton alone can unite its twin modes of tension-free farce (as Horace’s young clerks go on the town together) and something jazzily romantic, mournful yet hopeful."

"Staunton shows us a woman who wears a mask for a living, but is for once appearing as herself."

"Imelda Staunton is at the top of her game in stunning performance"

"Director Dominic Cooke dials down the Jewishness of the Jerry Herman/Michael Stewart story of professional meddler and All-American matchmaker Dolly Levi who can sort out everyone’s love lives except her own."

"The vast Palladium stage is dressed with huge sets that rise and fall, trolley cars and a steam train that chuffs from Yonkers to New York City and a moving video backdrop of streets and buildings. It is impressive but it occasionally dwarfs the performers, particularly in the first half."

"Jenna Russell is a considerable asset, bringing emotional weight to lovelorn hatmaker Irene Molloy, particularly in the melancholy optimism of Ribbons Down My Back. Nice work, too, from Emily Lane as her assistant Minnie."

"... there is no denying the powerhouse performance of Imelda Staunton who embraces the role with characteristic energy and intelligence, bringing light and shade to Dolly that only a serious actor at the top of her game could achieve."

"Good old-fashioned razzmatazz gleams brighter than ever"

"Imelda Staunton brings heart and substance to this lavish feast, as Dominic Cooke’s revival of the 1964 show lights up the London Palladium"

"It’s overwhelmingly lavish, its flimsy plot groaning under the weight of extravagances, like the giant train that steams across the stage, or the chorus of dancing waiters bearing silver salvers bright enough to blind half the front row. Charged with bringing both heart and substance to the feast, Imelda Staunton shines in the title role."

"Director Dominic Cooke’s production is a lean mean entertainment machine – each half is a tight hour... kept moving by Rae Smith’s projection-filled set design and Bill Deamer’s appropriately high-spirited choreography."

"Detractors are more likely to be bothered by the thinness of a plot where only Staunton’s Dolly has real agency or complexity, and even that only goes so deep."

"Still, if the show’s ending doesn’t ring true, its best songs unfailingly do, making what could feel like a fusty old creation gleam more brightly than ever."

"Imelda Staunton is back where she belongs"

"The star raises the roof without breaking into a sweat – it’s a performance that reaffirms her as one of British theatre’s greats"

"The way this actress can expand to fill a space even while standing still, can have you hanging on the smallest look, whether expressive of beaming mischief, beady assertion or quiet vulnerability, and can raise the roof without breaking into a sweat, reaffirms her as one of British theatre’s greats."

"That said, 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."

"But nominally moved as we may be by Dolly’s universally relatable journey, from grief to renewal, it doesn’t quite hit us in the solar-plexus."

"All told, I was glad to see the show, even gladder to see Staunton in her element, but I can’t say I felt much, beyond spirits-lifting pleasure. Still, that’s enough, surely."

"Nifty Imelda's a five star Dolly with the musical wattage of a nuclear power station"

"Nobody expected anything less of Imelda Staunton."

"If she didn’t hold some of it back, she’d surely blow the Palladium’s fuse board. She is, in other words, a perfect fit for Dolly"

"Bill Deamer’s choreography could do with the escalation of a cartwheel or tap routine, while Rae Smith’s stage design, creating movement with a huge turning-scroll of architectural etchings of 19th century New York, often feels oddly empty."

"Russell’s 58-year-old divorcee Irene, meanwhile, adds a touch of Oedipal jazz by getting her tenacious talons into Hepple’s 33-year-old virgin, Cornelius. But none of that subdues Staunton’s five-star turn – or diminishes a voice of smoke and sunshine, either in her torch song Love, Look In My Window, or in her glorious, show-stopping title number. And she can still manage a nifty bit of footwork in the dance routines."

"Imelda Staunton is luminous in a joyful revival"

"After collaborating on Follies in 2017, the actor and director Dominic Cooke reunite in this tonic for turbulent times at the London Palladium"

"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."

"Cooke’s production judiciously balances the reflective aspects of Dolly’s personality with the anarchic mayhem that she provokes, taking us from scenes where Staunton reflects wistfully in near darkness to the candy-coloured exuberance of 1890s New York."

"Things pick up, not least due to Jenna Russell’s delightfully caustic milliner, Irene Molloy, Harry Hepple’s enjoyably wide-eyed Cornelius, and Nicholas Skilbeck’s skilful conducting of the pit band to extract the songs’ full nuance."

"In this joyful, sensitive interpretation they prove the enduring chemistry of their creative partnership."

"Imelda Staunton sparkles in this effervescent revival"

"A production that floods the senses with brightness and fun"

"Well, hello – this Dolly is a complete delight. Like Gypsy before it, Jerry Herman’s classic 1964 musical had to wait for a major London revival until Imelda Staunton, with her powerhouse voice and personality, got round to it. She is the driving force of Dominic Cooke’s sumptuous, effervescent production, even bringing a note of pathos to the story’s wry wit and knockabout daftness."

"There follows an improbable but vastly entertaining web of coincidence and romance. Herman treats us to a string of classic numbers and clever lyrics, and Michael Stewart’s book is laced with fourth wall-breaking Vaudevillian humour."

"Staunton is 68, and the relative age-blindness of Cooke’s production adds a sense of passing time and fleeting happiness. But forget that: Cooke, designer Rae Smith and choreographer Bill Deamer mostly want to flood your senses with brightness and fun."

"Imelda Staunton will blow your socks off with this terrifically entertaining revival of the classic musical"

"Imelda Staunton is making herself gloriously seen and heard in Dominic Cooke's lavish revival of ‘Hello, Dolly!’"

"I'd say Staunton’s stronger and more age appropriate casting for Dolly than Barbra Streisand was in the 1969 movie."

"... 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."

"Victorious turn from Imelda Staunton"

"Hello, Imelda!” Staunton is spectacular as widowed matchmaker Dolly Levi in Dominic Cooke’s long-awaited revival"

"Sparkling with joie de vivre and running on a boisterous charm that prevents this safe but loveable production becoming overly sentimental"

"This production’s centrepiece is not its only visual feast: as the chipper cast members sing Put on Your Sunday Clothes, Smith’s skyline backdrop combines with Finn Ross’ videography, a moving floor and the entry of a life-size steam train carriage to create a cheer-worthy moving montage that’s not only perfect for the moment, but captures the show’s wider message of not letting life pass you by."

"Hello, Dolly! has to be one of the most uncomplicatedly ebullient musicals going and Cooke’s production – five years, one pandemic and a venue-change in the making – is worth the wait."

"Imelda Staunton Has the Wow, Wow, Wow Factor"

"The veteran British actress shines in a new revival that is the musical theater highlight of the West End summer."

"In a new London revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” the leading lady, Imelda Staunton, grips the audience from the beginning and holds them in a shared embrace throughout."

"She [Staunton] occupies a special place in British playgoers’ hearts, which this production, directed by Dominic Cooke’, taps into directly... we understand Dolly as a fully realized person, pain and all, and not just a figure of fun."

"Staunton never loses sight of Dolly’s psychological arc, and finds a reflectiveness in material that can often devolve into camp."

"The supporting cast pales somewhat in the presence of their star, but Sondheim regular Jenna Russell is in winning form as Irene Molloy, the milliner who doesn’t actually like hats."

"“Wow, wow, wow, fellas!” Dolly sings near the finish, and you can all but feel the crowd nodding in response."

"Imelda Staunton Is Marvelous in a Strikingly Sincere West End Revamp"

"No-one expected plush glamor to be replaced by honesty and sincerity but that’s what a strikingly tender cast, led by a marvelously no-nonsense Imelda Staunton, delivers in director Dominic Cooke’s increasingly joy-filled rethink."

"The production’s scale is immediately evident in the gleam of the overture as played by Nicholas Skilbeck’s lustrous, 21-piece band, the largest — by some distance — currently being heard in London."

"At the heart of it, naturally, is the leading lady, the recently ennobled Dame Imelda Staunton. As she sings, “Look at the old girl now, fellas,” she beams and a tangible wave of pleasure floods the auditorium. Before she changed career gear and started playing musical milestone roles like Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd” and Rose in “Gypsy,” Dolly Levi was not immediately obvious casting for Staunton, but her wealth of acting experience yields big dividends."

"Some will miss the conscious lack of showbiz pizazz but Cooke and company have seized an old-fashioned show, unexpectedly provided vanishingly rare but hugely welcome genuine charm, and made it zing."