UP WHERE SHE BELONGS
Imelda Staunton is a marvel, from Mama Rose in Gypsy to HMQ in The Crown. There is no lady of the stage more worthy of being greeted at the top of a Grand Staircase by an intermInable chorus of dancing waiters in velveteen tailcoats , buttons hellishly a-gleam, while a first-night audience of 2,280 go noisily bananas. She’s earned it, albeit often more strikingly than in this grand old smoker of a 1960’s Jerry Herman spectacular. Mind you, even the arrival onstage of a fullsize locomotive in steam had previously had its own rapturous applause, and that was in the much slower first half.
The setting- up of half-millionaire Vandergelder’s feed store and the widowed Dolly Levi’s artful matchmaking in her own interest is fun (she and Andy Nyman strike nice Beatrice “n Benedick sparks when they’re together, and one wishes it was more frequent). Harry Hepple as Cornelius the clerk seeking adventure in the big city is lovely, though his gift for physical comedy (Toby Parks of Spymonkey is credited) is underused: as so often in this very traditional show it shades too fast into yet another huge and datedly overfaithful ensemble. Imelda indeed only briefly comes into her own as a spellbinder in a couple of poignant solos, especially the one about not wanting to let the parade pass by without her as she ages. Otherwise – until the big title chorus – her gifts too feel underused: curbed by Dominic Cookes’s untypically vanilla traditionalism.
The music, of course, is splendid, big-scale. Some numbers – notably Jenna Russell’s wistful song about ribbons down her back and hope for love – are genuinely touching. But it feels of-its-period, the ’60s, and not always in the best way. It does energetic spectacle without ever being remotely surprising (though in the small part of Ernestina, Jodie Jacobs goes for broke with her restaurant capers and Emily Lane’s Minnie is pleasingly over-the-top screwball). But face it, nobody goes to the Palladium on a big big starry musical night to be shocked. It is not that sort of auditorium, and this is not that sort of play, even though much is made in the programme and comment of Dolly’s ‘agency’ and rejection of passive womanhood.
I thought director Dominic Cooke would offer us something less dogged, something a bit unexpected, befitting a period when we have seen inventive, immersive freshening of old musicals like Hytner’s Guys and Dolls at the Bridge, or Daniel Fish’s alarmingly dark Oklahoma at the Young Vic. The staging is sumptuous but traditional – last time I saw that rolling stage used so much was when Dorothy was dragging a particularly reluctant Toto along it ten years ago. The ensemble are top-of-the-range and throw themselves into the big numbers, but only the waiter sequence approaches that dangerous excitement a really good choreographer can produce. It’ll be a summer highlight for visitors, and most will love it to bits. I really wanted to.
box office lwtheatres.co.uk to 14 sept
rating 4 (i.e. 3 plus a musicals-mouse for traditionalism)
theatreCat 