[ WEEKEND ]
Shari Lynn (Dolly), with director John Rampage, rehearses for Diamond Head Theatre's "Hello, Dolly!"
A match made
at the source
Channing or Streisand? That can be a touchy question for fans of the musical favorite "Hello, Dolly!" Should Carol Channing, who originated the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi when the show opened on Broadway in 1964, been cast opposite Walter Matthau (as wealthy widower and object-of-affection Horace Vandergelder) instead of Barbra Streisand in the 1969 film? Or does Streisand deserve more accolades than she received for her performance in the film version, despite the problems that critics feel marred the production?
John Rampage, director/choreographer of the Diamond Head Theatre revival of "Hello, Dolly!" that opens tonight, admits to being partial to Channing, although he says that doesn't mean that he is anti-Streisand.
'Hello, Dolly!'
Presented by Diamond Head TheatreWhere: Diamond Head Theatre, 520 Makapuu Ave.
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 4 p.m. Sundays, through June 13
Tickets: $12 to $42 (discounts available for full-time students, adults 62 and older, and active duty military)
Call: 733-0274
"I recently saw the movie and appreciate it much more than I did when it first came out. I think (the then-27-year-old Streisand) actually does a very fine performance, considering that she's much too young (for the character). She does a much better job than I think anybody gave her credit for ... but Channing had a real insight into that character, and I think that's why, to this day, she is the person most closely associated with it and can still pull off the show, even at the age she's at right now."
Critics also noted such a decided lack of chemistry between Streisand and Matthau that Dolly's successful conquest of Vandergelder and his money in the final scenes seemed completely false. Whereas Streisand has since acknowledged in interviews that she and Matthau did not exactly hit it off, the stars of Rampage's production -- Shari Lynn as Dolly and Dennis Proulx as Vandergelder -- enjoy working together.
Proulx was Lynn's leading man when she starred in DHT's production of "Funny Girl" almost 15 years ago, and they've been friends ever since.
"They have a chemistry that's very easy for the two of them to play off of, and it makes my job that much easier," Rampage says, adding that since Proulx also played a secondary character in DHT's last "Hello, Dolly!" production, he "already has an understanding of how the characters work and the relationships involved."
And, not that she's old herself, Lynn is also more mature than Streisand was in 1969, to be much more believable than Streisand was as an assertive and resourceful matchmaker.
SO WITH two compatible stars, and Donald Yap as musical director, Rampage has been able to concentrate on the technical challenges involved in presenting a mid-1960s musical to a 2004 audience. Back then, it was expected that the first act would run 90 minutes, and the second for over an hour. These days, people don't want to spend three hours at the theater, and yet a director has a responsibility to honor the original intent of its creators Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart.
"You can't really change (the show), because that would be against the law to make major changes. What you want to do is tighten as much as possible," he says.
"The show is running really tight, and how we've done it is eliminating the audience sitting in the dark while the set is being changed. I'm using the aisles of the theater and the apron to end one scene and immediately go into the next -- very much the way that musicals are written today -- and it has cut down considerably on the running time of the show."
There are some setpieces, however, that are absolutely untouchable. For instance, no production of "Hello, Dolly!" would be complete without the big staircase that is the key to the huge production of the title song. (Cue the dancing waiters and Louis Armstrong, please.)
Rampage describes the staircase scene as "a legendary moment in theater history."
"We cannot reinvent the wheel, because there is a certain expectation from the audience about this moment (in the show). You have to have a staircase, you have to have waiters, you have to have the entrance the way that people expect it.
"We take older musicals, we want to breath new life in them and make them fresh, and yet there are moments in theatrical history that you have to honor or you will alienate the audience. That staircase is one of them and, yes, we do have it, and with the limitations of the size of our stage, it's as big as we can possibly make it."
Not that he minds -- Rampage loves to choreograph big numbers, and the bigger, the better.
"We have a wonderful guest set designer, Willie Sabel, who was recommended to us ... and the very first thing that we discussed was how we were going to do the staircase. I said that we had to be absolutely traditional. We were not going to play around with it."
Beyond that, he says, the challenge in reviving a classic like "Hello, Dolly!" is going back to the original concept.
"That's the key to doing a musical of the '60s or the '70s -- find what made it tick in the first place (and) reproduce that. That's how you breathe new life into older pieces -- go back and find out what the original intent was, and how they styled the show and why."
On the cover: Lisa Konove as "Ernestina" in the Diamond Head Theatre production of "Hello Dolly."
RAMPAGE FEELS especially fortunate that there is so much history to go back and refer to. There's Channing's definitive stage performance, the Streisand movie, an earlier nonmusical film version starring Shirley Booth, and even Thornton Wilder's original stage play, "The Matchmaker."
"I'm a firm believer in going back to the source. Find out why it worked in the first place and then try to tap into that. There's a lot of great history to go back to see what the goals were when they first created it, and what made it such an outstanding and legendary musical. You'd be amazed at how many layers of dust you can get rid by just going back to what they originally intended."
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