It’s been a long time since I was required to be funny
So the gloriously twinkly Imelda Staunton is raring to make her Hello, Dolly! debut this summer, four years after the pandemic halted it. Ahead of rehearsals, she talks nerves, switching up song numbers and ‘getting her teeth into something joyful’ after playing the late Queen in The Crown
IT WAS set to be the West End’s hottest ticket in town, until the arrival of the Covid pandemic quite literally brought the curtain down. But now, four-and-abit years after agreeing to headline Hello, Dolly!, Imelda Staunton is ready – break a leg! – for her starring performance. And despite the dynamic musical about a match-making widow having to reroot from the Adelphi Theatre to the London Palladium this summer, Imelda remains on effervescent form about it.
Inside the Grade II-listed venue’s unapologetically ornate Cinderella Bar where we meet, she smiles and shakes her head. “I still can’t quite believe that I’ll be starring in such an iconic show in such an iconic building,” she says. “My task now is to help deliver a totally uplifting evening.” And she’s well aware we’ll all be watching.
Not staged in London since 1984, Hello, Dolly! will officially run from July 6 to September 14. Originally planned to open in the summer of 2020, Imelda’s work on the fifth and sixth series of The Crown – in which she played the late Queen – added a second lengthy delay. As clearly relieved producer Michael Harrison observes: “It’s so nice to have Imelda back where she belongs.”
This latest production will be directed by Dominic Cooke, who worked with the esteemed actress on Follies at London’s National Theatre in 2017. The very last thing he did before lockdown struck was to gather with set and costume designer Rae Smith to show Imelda the Dolly set at the much-smaller Adelphi Theatre.
Back in late 2019, at Cooke’s urging, Imelda had telephoned the elderly composer Jerry Herman, who died on Boxing Day that year, seeking permission to insert one of his songs into the show – Just Leave Everything to Me, originally performed by Barbra Streisand in the 1969 film version of Hello, Dolly!
“Sometimes emails don’t quite cut it – they lack the personal touch. So I screwed up my courage in both hands and called Jerry,” says Imelda, 68. “I happened to be filming in Eastbourne at the time and, there I was, standing in my hotel room, making a transatlantic call to the great Jerry Herman.
It felt very weird.”
In the 1980s, Imelda had appeared in Herman’s musical, Mack and Mabel, so she already had huge respect for the composer. “But how do you say, ‘Right, I want to change the beginning of Dolly, blah, blah…’?” she points out. “In the end, I found myself saying I wanted to add yet one more of his brilliant songs, to make the show the very best it could be.
“Of course, he was absolutely charming and very generously agreed.”
ANOTHER number, Love, Look in My Window, added during Ethel Merman’s run as Dolly on Broadway, will air at the Palladium with one more Herman song, Penny in My Pocket, from Scott Rudin’s Broadway production, starring Bette Midler.
Hello, Dolly! made its musical debut in 1964, based on Thornton Wilder’s story, The Matchmaker, about a widow pondering how to get on with her life.
Cooke says Wilder was so keen on that first production, on Broadway, that he went to see it once every week throughout its run of 2,844 performances.
He adds: “Hello, Dolly! is known as this glitzy, showy piece, but I’ve always thought there’s much more to it – it’s about a woman coming back to life after grief. She asks herself, ‘Do I have the energy to go a second round?’ I think there’s something profound about that. A lot of people give up after they lose their partner.”
He says that’s why Imelda was the “right person” to play this role.
“Obviously, she can do the singing and the dancing but she’s got so much depth as an actress and that’s why I wanted her to do it,” he explains. “The 1964 production starred Carol Channing being sensational, but there wasn’t that much depth there.
“Great musicals are underpinned by something. Yes, you have to enjoy them. But, if you look at all the big musicals – Rodgers and Hammerstein being a great example – they do have something underneath that they’re properly exploring. They’re not just escapist entertainment.”
That said, the director admits Imelda didn’t
initially jump at the offer. “She had to think very deeply whether my version of this made sense to her,” he says. “Whether to allow those slightly more complicated moments. So, we had a lot of conversations early on.”
Thankfully, once her mind was made up, she didn’t waver during the many delays. More recently, she’s taken up singing classes to get her voice in shape, given she has not done a stage musical in seven years since Follies.
And plenty of people will want to hear her in full flow. When Hello, Dolly! tickets went on sale for the Adelphi in late 2019 and early 2020, it racked up an advance of £3million. One well-informed veteran show-watcher says this latest production will cost £5million to stage at the Palladium with weekly running costs of £400,000.
Producer Michael Harrison says such costs inevitably mean “ticket prices are going to be a little bit high”. But he promises “a wide spread of prices across the house”, with the cheapest seats in the £25 range. What’s more, the Palladium has terrific sightlines: “There’s not really a bad seat, even if you go up to the upper circle or the back of the stalls.”
Harrison first collaborated with Imelda in the West End when the celebrated production of Gypsy transferred from Chichester to London’s Savoy Theatre in 2015.
He has confirmed that joining her will be Andy Nyman as Horace Vandergelder, Jenna Russell as Irene Molloy, Tyrone Huntley as Barnaby Tucker and Harry Hepple as Cornelius Hackl. There will be an 18-piece orchestra accompanying a cast of 35. Star of the show Imelda had to keep Dolly at the back of her mind for four years as she inhabited another equally daunting role, one she calls “serious and challenging and quite sad”.
That was, of course, Queen Elizabeth II in the final two series of The Crown, whose passing added poignancy to her final scenes on screen.
As Imelda explains: “We resumed filming and then, very soon after, the Queen died, so it was quite difficult. We carried on with as much dignity and grace as everyone always had done but, obviously, there was a very different atmosphere in the world, in England and particularly on set. “We couldn’t do anything differently – we just had to carry on as before. But we were all a bit sad. I think it inevitably informed the temperature, if you like, rather than altered the material at all. But, there’s no doubt, it was different.”
‘About the show, someone asked “Will you be playing Dolly Parton?” I was enormously flattered’
SO, NOW to get her teeth into something joyful is enormously exhilarating, she says. “And I’d forgotten how funny it is. To be honest, it’s been quite a long time since I was required to be funny.”
Having said that, the rehearsal process can obscure the humour.
“When you rehearse the same scenes over and over, it’s funny to begin with but, after a time, nobody’s going to laugh because they’ve heard it all so many times before.
“What really gets everything pumping is when you do it eight times a week in front of a live audience, who are hearing the jokes for the first time and greet them with gales of laughter. I love that.”
Nor does she feel the long shadow of Streisand inhibiting this new production. “That film was made in 1969 – more than half a century ago – and she was of course brilliant, if 40 years too young for the role.
“But it’s possible to take the kernel of something and come up with a completely different piece of work.”
So, does she think she’ll be nervous? “Of course, and I hope so. Nerves produce adrenalin and you need that. I regard that as doubting yourself in a healthy way.
“But, in the end, you have to trust your own judgement. I love that line from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George: ‘Let it come from you and then it will be new.’ That says it perfectly.”
She holds dear the responsibility of bringing “an old musical to a new audience”.
However, she’s far too pragmatic – and self-deprecating – to get carried away with her own importance. “I told someone I was doing the show the other day and they said: ‘Oh, will you be playing Dolly Parton?’ I was enormously flattered.”
● For tickets, visit HelloDollyLDN.com