Hello, Dolly! At Springfield Little Theater

Springfield Little Theater has five performances of the musical Hello, Dolly! between February 7th and February 23rd. A once Broadway actress and member of Actors Equity Association, Kim Crosby, played the lead of Ms. Dolly.  

The only complaint I have is the story line. Ms. Dolly is this extravagant and successful woman in the 1890s. Her husband died a few years prior, but she supports herself by doing just about anything and everything to help people with their lives, and is left very well off. A feed store owner hires her to find him a new wife, and he makes it very clear that he just wants her to clean and cook for him. She has decided she wants to marry again and purposely ruins all the potential new relationships in a hope to make him want her instead.

The guy was awful. He was a jerk to his employees, and treated his daughter like an object by disregarding her feelings. I pretty much hated him.

Eventually, he catches on and tells her he would never marry her. She leaves the situation, but later comes back, and he has changed his mind about the marriage. After all of this, she still marries the dude. In all fairness, none of this had anything to do with their performance, I just didn’t love the plot.    

SLT did an amazing job performing the musical. It was a really fun and high energy musical, and I enjoyed it, despite the plot. The singing and orchestra gave me chills. The choreography was really intricate, and really brought it to life; there were a lot of elements of ballet periodically that were executed nearly flawlessly. They did a lot of fun things with color in the costuming, which was also really well done. I know I am partial to huge sets, having not had much experience with big eccentric sets, they always are really exciting for me. Overall, I don’t honestly think there was anything big they could have done better, and I really liked it.