Wheelock Family Theater kicks off 20th year with `Hello Dolly'

Wheelock Family Theater kicks off 20th year with `Hello Dolly'

Beverly Creasey

The Wheelock Family Theatre has passed another milestone. "Hello, Dolly!" kicks off their 20th anniversary season of presenting modern drama and classic musicals for the whole family. What sets Wheelock apart from other theaters is their mission: to keep ticket prices affordable and to make their productions reflect the diversity of their audiences.

Children get to see actors their own age alongside adult actors and at Wheelock, the actors get up close and personal. They enter through the audience and even perform in the aisles. Dolly Levi hands out business cards as she enters. Dancing lessons, matchmaking and short distance hauling, they're all her specialty. Robin V. Allison makes Dolly a delicious steam roller, flattening all opposition with her cockeyed determination.

When Dolly sets her cap for Robert Saoud as the curmudgeonly Horace Vandergelder, he doesn't stand a chance. Saoud makes the stingy storeowner so cheerfully cantankerous, you can't help seeing what Dolly sees in him.

The adorable subplot in "Dolly" is the big city adventure undertaken by Vandergelder's two rather green clerks. Byron Darden and Bill Monnen play the inexperienced lads with goofy abandon. The children in the audience went wild over Monnen's pratfalls... And director Jane Staab gives the two lots of shtick when Monnen and Darden have to hide in closets and under tables to avoid being seen by their grumpy boss.

Monnen can handle farce one minute and romance the next and make it work. The elegant Grace Napier plays his love interest. Their budding affection is one of "Dolly's" charms.

Comic relief is supplied by Gamalia Pharms as the giddy, squeaky-voiced hat shop assistant and by Dan Bolton as the earnest but oddball suitor for Vandergelder's niece. Staab adds a number of whimsical touches, like Bolton's number still pasted to his back long after the dance contest... She and set designer Rick Mauran pay loving attention to detail in the old fashioned silhouette cut-out tableau which opens the show (lit in dusky shades of red and purple by Russ Swift).

Staab perches Dolly (in Marian Piro's stylish turn-of-the-century finery) atop scaffolding which becomes a railroad trestle when Dolly catches the train to New York and a jungle gym for the male chorus to swing from in the "It Takes a Woman" reprise.

Jonathan Goldberg's orchestra keeps Jerry Herman's snappy, syncopated score bright and sassy, especially for the big showstopper when Gary Thomas Ng's waiters get to serenade Dolly. Tristan DiVincenzo's choreography was trampled a bit in the "Waiter's Gallop" opening weekend, but one small flaw doesn't diminish the fun. This "Dolly" delights.

Hello, Dolly!

through Nov. 26th

Fridays at 7:30,

Sat. & Sun. at 3 P.M.

Box Office 879-2147

Photo (Gamalia Pharms)