After a four-year delay brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Imelda Staunton is lastly taking up the lead function within the first West Finish staging of Howdy, Dolly! since 1984.
The manufacturing reunites her with director Dominic Cooke after their phenomenal success with Stephen Sondheim’s Follies on the Nationwide Theatre in 2017 and 2019. It would deliver an “outdated musical to a brand new viewers”, stated Staunton in dialog with Cooke on Wednesday on the London Palladium, the place the present will open in July. She joked that the traditional present, which grew to become a movie starring Barbra Streisand in 1969, shouldn’t be so well-known in the present day. “Somebody stated to me: am I taking part in Dolly Parton?” she stated with fun. “I’m flattered!”
Howdy, Dolly! has had 4 Broadway revivals since its premiere in 1964, the newest in 2017-18 with Bette Midler taking part in the matchmaker Dolly Levi. Its unique star Carol Channing performed Dolly greater than 5,000 instances, together with in London in 1979, and the drag artist Danny La Rue took on the function within the West Finish quickly afterwards.
Cooke and Staunton had been on account of open their manufacturing at London’s Adelphi theatre in the summertime of 2020 however it grew to become one of many highest-profile exhibits to be delayed by the pandemic. The actor stated that ready 4 years to play Dolly had been each “comforting and peculiar” and that she wished to provide audiences a “completely joyful night”. She recalled her personal previous journeys to the Palladium, seeing performances by nice stars together with Josephine Baker and Bing Crosby (“folks had been singing – I used to be livid!”).
Staunton’s latest display screen roles have included as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, which completed its sixth season in 2023. It had been a “severe, difficult and unhappy” expertise, she stated, so she was trying ahead to a enjoyable challenge. The function of Dolly, who finds a match for the “half a millionaire” Horace Vandergelder in Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s musical, is a distinction to the “anger and despair” of her different latest stage roles, comparable to in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and Gypsy. Staunton received Olivier awards for greatest actress in a musical for each of these productions, in addition to for Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
Cooke stated that he hoped the story of Dolly, who embraces life after the dying of her husband, would join with audiences “stepping again into the world” within the wake of the pandemic.
The present, which runs on the Palladium from 6 July to 14 September, additionally stars Andy Nyman, Jenna Russell, Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple. It’s produced by Michael Harrison. The musical will incorporate a tune that was written for the movie moderately than the stage play, Simply Depart Every little thing to Me, after Staunton referred to as up Herman to hunt his blessing. Cooke stated he would additionally draw upon Thornton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker, which impressed Herman and Stewart’s musical. He stated that traditional musicals could possibly be each handled significantly and respectfully similtaneously being reinvented, pointing in direction of the latest model of Oklahoma! that transferred from the Younger Vic to the West Finish.
Howdy, Dolly! could have a lavish set and costumes from Rae Smith. The unique 60s staging was “produced on the top of the Broadway musical” and was richly designed, stated Cooke. Staunton agreed: “We will’t do it with two chairs and a polo-neck sweater!”
Staunton stated on BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday that there might be another Downton Abbey movie and that she is reprising the function of Aunt Lucy in one other Paddington movie. She informed the Guardian on the Palladium that the West Finish has recovered “remarkably effectively” for the reason that pandemic closed theatres however that she feared for theatres exterior the capital. “I would like them to be helped,” she stated. “My beginnings had been six years in repertory theatre, going throughout the nation … Theatres exterior London want a serving to hand.” Referring to latest native councils chopping their arts budgets, she stated that hospitals and theatres shouldn’t be pitted towards one another when cuts had been being made. “One shouldn’t be on the expense of the opposite.”
Anybody dissatisfied to listen to that Staunton shouldn’t be taking part in Dolly Parton can a minimum of stay up for Right here You Come Once more, a brand new musical that includes Parton’s greatest hits and endorsed by the nation music legend. It opens at Leeds Playhouse in Might and goes on tour previous to a West Finish run.
