Lyric Stage Does It…Again!

Hello, Dolly!

Lyric Stage Boston

May 16-June 22, 2025

Aimee Doherty and the cast of Hello, Dolly! All photos by Mark S. Howard

I have been attending Lyric Stage for over thirty years and am still confounded—amazed!—at the blockbusters they produce on their intimate thrust stage. Lyric always ends the season with a major musical, but when I saw that they were producing Hello, Dolly! this year I thought: no way. Like so many gay men of my age, I’ve seen plenty of Dolly Levi’s, including the indomitable Bette Midler on Broadway in 2017. Bette is the Dolly for our times, and I wasn’t keen to see a minor imitation.

Happily, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. The Lyric’s Hello, Dolly! is among the best Dolly’s ever produced, in large part because, once again, they turned the challenges of their quirky space into assets. The cast is everywhere, and we are right along with them, rooting for every illogical love pairing in this truly wonderful show.

The ridiculous plot of Hello, Dolly! is integral to the show’s wonder. Except for a brief denouement, the entire play takes place in one glorious day, starting in the hinterlands of 1900’s Yonkers and working our way downtown to Harmonia Gardens, the most exclusive (and expensive) entertainment emporium in New York. Along the way Chief Hay & Feed Clerk Cornelius Hackl falls in love with milliner Irene Malloy, Assistant Barnaby Tucker swoons over shopgirl Minnie Fay, niece Ermengarde shrieks for artist Ambrose, while head honcho Horace Vandergelder, half-a-millionaire owner of Hay & Feed, has hired matchmaker and general meddler Dolly Levi to find him a second wife. Dolly has set her own sights on Horace, and following a series of hysterical mismatches, reels him in for herself.

At the Lyric, which hasn’t got the space to play these antics out on discrete sets, one half of the audience sits beneath the YONKERS train station sign, the other half, GRAND CENTRAL. The action unfurls upon a huge map of Gilded Age New York. It’s simple. It’s genius.

There are certain requirements for an actor to play Dolly Levi. She must be charming, funny, and a good belter. She must also have snap comic timing. Beyond that, there’s limited room for stamping the part your own, Carol Channing was daffy, Barbara Streisand busy-bodied, Bette Midler simply outrageous. Aimee Doherty, the reigning queen of Boston’s local theater community, brings an intuitive warmth to the role that I’ve never seen. Her audience repartee brings us all under her spell.

Aimee Doherty and cast

Besides having a knock-out Dolly (and a curmudgeonly Horace) a great production of Hello, Dolly! requires two other essentials: a satisfying Cornelius/Irene/Barnaby/Minnie quartet and a waitstaff full of great male dancers. Again, the Lyric delivers.

I’ve always found the subplot among the clerks and hatmakers more charming than the main Dolly/Horace event. I love the backstory’s ballads (“Ribbons Down My Back,” “Elegance,” “It Only Takes a Moment”). Michael Jennings Mahoney (Cornelius) and Kristian Espiritu (Irene) make an unexpectedly lovely couple, whose voices align in an atypical yet lavish way.

As for dancers, the troupe is fantastic. Local choreographer Ilyse Robbins creates her best work ever: jaw-dropping moves on the tiny stage. Jackson Jirard and Sean Keim, barely five feet tall each, are phenomenon of whirling, spinning, head-over-heals motion. The second act scene of dancing waiters is one of the most famous in musical theater. The audience expects certain stances, certain sequences that we relish from Dollys’ past. Choreographer Robbins delivers them all, yet manages to add her own flourishes, making the scene simultaneously familiar and fresh.

Director Maurice Emmanuel Parent deserves a special shout-out. Mr. Parent is an actor, playwright, director, teacher, and co-founder of the Front Porch Arts Collaborative, a Black theater company that works with many area theaters to produce plays that highlight Black experience. He is a Herculean talent and a great asset to our community. What’s so welcome, to me, in his direction of Hello, Dolly! is the broad vision he brings to a play that’s unburdened by labels of ‘Black,’ ‘underrepresented,’ ‘gay,’ or whatever. If we’re going to successfully navigate to a post-DEI world, it’s imperative that talents like Maurice Emmanuel are not pigeon-holed into plays that bear labels. And his gift to us is a Dolly for everyone. Horace is played by a Black man; Barnaby is Asian; Irene Philipinx; one of the dancing couples is gay. Not one of the casting or directorial decisions feels forced, each only elevates the spirit of the show. Kudos to the Lyric for hiring Mr. Parent. Kudos to Mr. Parent for making all the right moves with such a light and facile hand.

The Lyric’s Hello, Dolly! is a terrific finale to a great theater season. Go see it!

Aimee Doherty and cast