Boston Today once called my mom the
Lizzie Borden of drama critics. She
isn't, really. She just uses her arts column
as an excuse to piss off the Brahmin
Republicans on Marlborough Street.
One week she blamed them for the quality
of low-income housing that turned Stanley
Kowalski into an animal, and then she told
them that the blood on their hands belonged
to Willy Loman.
- This is what happened to a revival of poor
Hello, Dolly!
- * * *
THEATRE
HELLO, DOLLY! AT THE LYRIC STAGE
BY LISA WEI HWONG
It doesn’t matter if you’re short, tall, quiet,
loud, agnostic, asexual, intelligent, a gibber-
ing idiot, an international terrorist, or the
Hillside Strangler—Dolly Gallagher Levi will
fix you up with a partner whether you want
one or not. For a fee, of course. That’s
because she’s a matchmaker. If she were
working Tremont Street after 7:00 p.m.,
she’d be called a pimp.
- * * *
Here’s a woman so greedy, so avaricious,
and so lacking any sense of propriety, she
drove her husband Ephraim to an early
grave—and now, presumably without a
hobby, she appears determined to cast a
far wider net. By evening’s end, she’s
destroyed four lives and three relationships,
lied to twenty-six featured players and an
entire chorus, and cost at least seven
people their respective jobs. This is a
reason to sing? Chekhov and Ibsen could
have made careers out of her. (In fact, they
did.)
- * * *
Jerry Herman’s always-endearing melodies
should not mislead anyone into thinking
that Hello, Dolly! actually deserves him.
Herman—a national treasure—is perhaps
the only composer now or ever who could
just as easily leave an audience humming
the Nuremberg Trials.
- * * *
At its cold and mercenary heart, Hello, Dolly!
remains a bleak and ultimately despairing
glimpse into the vacant soul of a have-not
so vested in vengeance, her only redemption
is the ruin she might inflict upon others as
she herself waits patiently to die. All it would
take is a score by Stephen Sondheim to
make you want to kill yourself.
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