Hello, Dolly! review: 'kooky' musical 'delight' starring Imelda Staunton

"Well, hello – this Dolly is a complete delight," said Nick Curtis in the London Evening Standard. Jerry Herman's glitzy 1964 musical – about a widowed New York matchmaker who finally makes a match for herself – contains a string of classic numbers and has a book, by Michael Stewart, that is laced with "knockabout daftness". 

To this production, Imelda Staunton brings splinter-sharp comic timing, radiant charm and dramatic heft, as well as her "formidable voice". And director Dominic Cooke "throws everything at it [that] the vast Palladium stage can handle", said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. We get marching bands, swirling crowds and an "army of spinning waiters brandishing extravagant, quivering desserts on silver salvers as they pirouette around". It's an irresistible joy – funny and "genuinely touching". 

Dolly Levi is closely associated with some of the true Broadway greats – Carol Channing, Ethel Merman, Barbra Streisand – said Matt Wolf in The New York Times. Staunton is "probably the only English performer who can command as much respect in the role" as those stars. In lesser hands, the part can devolve into camp, but Staunton's Dolly is a "fully realised person, pain and all, not just a figure of fun". She "grips the audience from the beginning and holds them in a shared embrace throughout". "Wow, wow, wow, fellas!" Dolly sings towards the end, and "you can all but feel the crowd nodding in response". 

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Cooke's production has less conspicuous "showbiz pizzazz" than some Broadway revivals, but it zings with that rare thing: "genuine charm", said David Benedict in Variety. Jenna Russell is "Rolls-Royce casting" as Dolly's frenemy, Irene Molloy. Andy Nyman delivers a restrained and nuanced turn as Dolly's intended, Horace, so that when she finally takes his hand, the "shiver of tenderness is surprisingly touching". 

At its core, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, this is a "wonderfully kooky" romantic comedy with a "deeply serious message: that it is never too late to reach for happiness, and that we must all do so. 'My heart is about to burst,' the chorus sings. Same here."