Hello, Dolly!
Ogunquit Playhouse, Ogunquit, ME, June 27, 2026
Reviewed by John Amodeo
If you are like me, you may be thinking you don’t need to see another production of Hello, Dolly! Why see another, when you have seen the legendary Carol Channing recreate her Tony Award-winning performance in the 1995 Broadway revival as I did, followed by seeing the 2017 Broadway revival, which earned 10 Tony nominations, winning three of them for Best Revival of a Musical, Best Actress (Bette Midler), and Best Featured Actor (Gavin Creel). Both productions epitomized what is best about musical theater, and I didn’t feel any future productions could live up to that. However, now that I have seen the highly worthy production currently playing at the Ogunquit Playhouse through July 18, 2026, let me disabuse you of that notion. This is a Hello, Dolly! you don’t want to miss. When this production is firing on all cylinders, it is as thrilling and entertaining as musical comedy can get, and it is the talented cast that makes this production truly soar.
The first reason to run now to the Ogunquit Playhouse is to see Tony Award winner Beth Leavel’s hilarious Dolly Levi, the incorrigible matchmaker of turn-of-the-century Yonkers, New York, who is determined to marry Horace Vandergelder, the well-known half-a-millionaire. Leavel was born to play Dolly, and it showed as she moved organically from scene to scene, where she left teeth marks on every bit of scenery, and inhabited her dialogue as if she conjured it herself. Her impeccable comic timing and rubber-faced expressions kept the audience busting a gut from one sight gag after another. Leavel was joined by her real-life husband, Broadway veteran Adam Heller, as Vandergelder, who was every bit her match, especially when they sparred, which was thankfully often. Their natural chemistry made their inevitable match at the show’s climax that much more fulfilling.
Leavel and Heller received exemplary support from Matt Doyle’s Cornelius Hackl and Ruthie Ann Miles’ Irene Molloy as secondary romantic leads, and from Davey Fried’s Barnaby Tucker and Susana Cordón’s Minnie Fay as tertiary romantic leads. Young Hackl and Tucker are Vandergelder’s put-upon employees in his seed warehouse, and they rebel by taking a day off to go into Manhattan to find love. Spotting Vandergelder in town, they hide out in Molloy’s hat shop, where Fay works as her assistant. When Vandergelder walks into the hat shop to buy something for the woman Levi has set him up with (where he is set up to fail, of course), hilarity ensues.
Leavel, Heller, and Doyle have just finished performing together in the comic farce When Playwrights Kill, which received its world premiere at Boston’s Huntington Theatre this past winter. So, the three were already a well-oiled machine when cast in Dolly! Add in a pro like the Tony Award-winning Miles, and it doesn’t get much better. It may be difficult to forget Creel’s Tony Award-winning performance as Cornelius in the 2017 Broadway revival, but Doyle, himself a Tony Award-winner (Company), offered irrepressible zeal that made his Cornelius lovable and winning, especially in his comic moments; “It Only Takes a Moment” has never been sung more sweetly than by him. Miles’ Irene entered abrasively at first, but once she warmed up, she and Doyle were trading flirtatious bon mots with adroit speed and comic urgency. Miles beautifully sang her solo “Ribbons Down My Back,” not in the usual aspirational way but wistfully, as if her chance of finding love again had passed. This nuance made the spark of romance between Irene and Cornelius even more delicious.
The revelations in the cast came with Fried’s Barnaby and Cordón’s Minnie. They are emerging performers who have only a few other regional-theater credits, but that never showed. Together and individually, they charmed in every scene. They took their thankless, underwritten parts and made pivotal characters out of them. Bubbling with enthusiasm, they hit their comic marks every time, egged each other on, and made their pair greater than the sum of their parts. Cordón was a joy to watch as she nailed every gag and enhanced each song with her lilting voice.
When Doyle, Miles, Fried, and Cordón opened Act II with “Elegance,” often a throw-away number, dressed up to go out on the town, they looked like they were having the time of their lives, and so were we. When these four were joined by the two leads, Leavel and Heller, as in the slapstick door-slamming scene in the hat shop or the dinner scene in Harmonia Gardens, you could have been watching a vintage Keystone Cops sequenxe in a Charlie Chaplin film, so well did they work together as a mini ensemble.
But in the end, the show belonged to Leavel. While her entire performance was a master class in musical comedy, there were some moments worth singling out. The Harmonia Gardens dinner scene ended with her alone at the dinner table where she chewed all the food on the table and the scenery along with it. Without a word spoken, we were in the palm of her hand, splitting our sides as she took each bite. And she was both hilarious and heartbreaking whenever Dolly spoke to her late husband Ephraim to get his permission to marry again. Here is where Michael Steward’s book shined brightest and most poignant, and Leavel managed not to leave a dry eye in the house. One such monologue led right into the explosive “Before the Parade Passes By.” When Leavel sang the line “I’m going to raise the roof,” you could hear the bolts coming loose in the roof’s rattling rafters. She brought the song to a pyrotechnic finish worthy of the 4th of July.
It was a shame that such a sparkling diamond of a cast had to perform in such a plainly uneven production. Director Maggie Burrows left awkward gaps in the scene transitions. William Carlos Angulo’s repetitive twirl-and-kick choreography soon became tedious and rarely used more than two dancers at a time. This might have been caused by the shallow depth of the Ogunquit Playhouse’s stage, where the full 14-member ensemble would have overcrowded it. The thin orchestra with two keyboard/synths, bass, drums, and three horns sounded tinny most of the time, which didn’t do justice to Jerry Herman’s beautiful score or the mellifluous voices singing his songs. Leon Dubrowki’s costumes were period perfect, but disappointingly muted and monochrome in “Put on Your Sunday Clothes.” In “Ribbons Down My Back,” clear ribbons hardly “stirred a rainbow up behind” Irene when she donned her ribbon-festooned chapeau. The scenic design by David L. Arsneault was somewhat hit and miss, but his best work was the Harmonia Gardens set, which closely resembled the grandeur of the Broadway production and drew delighted gasps from the audience. Within that monumental set, Angulo wisely deferred to Gower Champion’s original iconic choreography for the waiters in the “Hello, Dolly” number, thus making Leavel’s most shining moment rise high. Don’t let the artistic team’s missteps deter you. This is a Hello, Dolly! That offers some of the theater world’s best performances, and you will be glad you can say you saw them.
Hello, Dolly! runs through July 18 at the Ogunquit Playhouse, 10 Main Street, Ogunquit, ME 03907. Tickets $60-$140. For Tickets and Information, visit: https://www.ogunquitplayhouse.org/show/hello-dolly-3/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22899993530&gbraid=0AAAAArA5t1RKZ0fHPluuTLAOvhFu8emgb&gclid=CjwKCAjwmJjSBhB-EiwAkZgxixL0U1z2p8DnbdtkWbTm1Rnk47_7AbCR71A1OZZ6saFc-JSYYlIAdRoC5p0QAvD_BwE
