The Black Box Theatre (BBT) in downtown Moline opens its production of “Hello, Dolly” on Thursday, June 1 and it will run through the 10th.
“Hello, Dolly!” is a beloved 1964 musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder‘s 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955.
The musical follows the story of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a strong-willed matchmaker, as she travels to Yonkers, N.Y., to find a match for the miserly “well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder.
The show has become one of the most enduring musical theater hits, with four Broadway revivals and international success. It was also made into the 1969 film by 20th Century Fox starring Barbra Streisand.
“Many people have wondered how we would do a big musical on the Black Box Theatre stage,” BBT director (and theater co-founder) Lora Adams said recently. “When I started as an actor, I did Minnie Fae (in Dolly”) at Wilson Street East Dinner Playhouse in Madison, Wisconsin, which was a smaller stage than BBT so I knew it could be done,” Adams said of a late 1970s production.
“Seth Reines, who’s done a lot of stuff at Circa, directed it and cast me,” she said this week, noting that version had a cast of 10, like the new one. “I stole every idea I could from that.”
Reines is the reason Adams moved to the QC, after Circa ’21 owner Denny Hitchcock lost an actress who was to play Liat in “South Pacific,” one day before rehearsals were to start, in 1980, and Adams did it.
Hitchcock called her in Florida about eight months later, and cast her in “The Mousetrap,” in 1981. Adams ran her own theater (the Evergreen) in Lake Geneva, Wis., from 1995 to 2000, when she started her job at WQPT (director of marketing and local content), the QC’s PBS station.
“One thing about this set, it’s very similar to what we had” in Madison,” Adams said of the new BBT production in the 60-seat theater. “The idea came from there.”
The current version has trimmed most of the original extended dance numbers. Rhode has been a dream to work with, the director said.
“What I would like is movement that helps tell the story,” Adams said. Cooper choreographed the dance between Dolly and the waiter, Stanley.
“I’ve always considered myself a very lucky, very blessed person,” Adams said. “We didn’t have a lot of people come to audition, but the people who did were exactly the people we needed to be in this show. I won’t complain a little bit.”
Who’s in it?
The cast of the Black Box production includes Shelley Cooper as Dolly Levi, Doug Kutzli as Horace Vandergelder, Tristan Tapscott as Cornelius Hackl, Jacqueline Isaascson as Irene Malloy, Roger, Pavey, Jr. as Barnaby Tucker, Mukupa Lungu as Minnie Fae, with Lucy Dlarmini, Robert Gregory, Jennifer Cook Gregory, and Tyler Henning.
The music director is C.J. Parker, choreography by Ballet Quad Cities dancer Madeleine Rhodes, with direction and set design by Lora Adams.
They had to replace one cast member, and brought in Tyler Henning two weeks into rehearsals (which began May 1). “He just dived right in,” Adams said. “There are a lot of firsts.”
This is the first time BBT has used pre-recorded tracks for a musical; the first time Roger Pavey has acted in a show here (after lighting designed several). It’s also Parker’s first music directing for Black Box, recommended from Adams’s friend Tracy Singleton.
“It’s been magic; I couldn’t be any happier,” she said of Parker.
The Augustana students (Pavey and Makupa Lungu, rising seniors, and 2023 grad Jacqueline Isaacson) were all veterans of the fall 2022 college production of “Cabaret,” directed and choreographed by Cooper, who teaches musical theater at the Rock Island private college.
Adams called Lungu “just charming” – “I loved the take she had on Minnie. Since I played Minnie, whoever was gonna do it, better be good,” she said.
Isaacson and Kutzli were both in BBT’s “Ride the Cyclone,” which Cooper directed in August 2022. Tapscott (a Circa acting veteran) is playing the same role he did in Music Guild’s production of “Dolly” in 2012.
Adams uses a lot of her late mother’s jewelry in the new show. “I always feel like she’s around, making things work the way they are,” she said.
In the 1890-era story, all of New York City is excited because widowed, brassy Dolly Levi (played by Barbra Streisand in the 1969 film) is in town. Dolly makes a living through matchmaking and other sidelines. She is seeking a wife for grumpy Horace Vandergelder, the well-known “half-a-millionaire,” but it becomes clear that Dolly intends to marry Horace herself.
Dolly wants to send Horace’s money circulating among people like rainwater, the way her late husband taught her. The show’s happy songs include “Put On Your Sunday Clothes,” “Ribbons Down My Back,” “Before the Parade Passes By,” “Elegance,” “It Only Takes A Moment,” and, of course, the title number.
The original musical ran for 2,844 performances on Broadway with Carol Channing (1921-2019) in the title role. At the time, it was the longest-running Broadway musical. The show has been revived several times on Broadway, including in 1995, again with Channing, and 2017-18 with Bette Midler.
Taking on an iconic role
Cooper has performed her one-woman show on Maria Callas, “La Divina,” at BBT, and Adams knew she’d be perfect in the title role.
“It was a lot of work I was honored and a pleasure to do,” Cooper said of Dolly. “As a musical theater professor, there’s Mama Rose and ‘Hello, Dolly’ that are the ‘King Lear’ roles of musical theater. To be able to be working on a role like this while I’m also teaching students at the same time – to be able to bring that into my classroom, you can’t beat that.”
“It’s a lot,” she said of the show, noting she’s not worried about copying Channing or Streisand. “It’s the, ‘Oh my gosh, am I gonna live up to that reputation?’ It’s not necessarily, I don’t want to copy them, because they’re iconic in the role. It’s the, ‘Oh gosh, do I have that?’ It’s kind of impostor syndrome that kicks in. But it’s a blast.”
“The music is my favorite part of the whole thing, and getting to work with Lora and the whole cast and everything,” Cooper said.
“I have a cast that I trust implicitly,” Adams said.
Cooper said it’s a true thrill to share the stage with her students.
“It’s what I feel like I’m training them to do,” she said. “To be able to share the stage with my students has been such a pleasure, to watch them grow, to learn from Lora and take guidance. That’s been a real pleasure, and to be on stage with them – not as their teacher but as their peer, you can’t beat that.”
“This is what you want to do for a living – you’re getting a stipend from me,” Adams said of the students. “Be the performer you trained to be. This is what these kids are going to school for.”
Doing such a traditional classic show is fairly unusual for BBT (which has made its mark with many more contemporary, offbeat, edgier pieces), but it’s summer and Adams wants present something more commercially popular.
“As much as love the creative part of it, I still have rent to pay and utilities to pay,” she said. “That’s a big part of this.”
The BBT (1623 5th Ave., Moline) show times are June 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10 at 7:30 p.m. and June 3 and 4 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 and available at the BBT website HERE. There is no evening performance this Saturday since GIT Improv is scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. show, also $10.
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