For its long-awaited return to the Mountain Theatre, Mountain Play is going with an absolute classic.
Organizers are taking up the production of Hello, Dolly, the 1964 musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman 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, New York, to find a match for the miserly “well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder.
Hello, Dolly bursts with humor, romance, high-energy dancing, and some of the greatest songs in musical theater history,” says Mountain Play Executive Director & Artistic Producer Eileen Grady.
Over the nearly 60 years since it debuted, 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 Hello Dolly!, which won three Academy Awards.
The cast for this year’s production is led by Dyan McBride, who is set to play the iconic role of Dolly Levi, is an award-winning actress whom Mountain Play audiences may remember as Donna Sheridan in Mamma Mia. She is currently an Associate Artist with 42nd Street Moon and Lucky Penny Theatre and a professor of theatre arts at Las Positas College.
Longtime Mountain Play staple Jay Manley, who has directed the Sound of Music for that 100th anniversary production, as well as the Tony Award-winning musical West Side Story, among many others.