Hello, Dolly!
I went to see Hello, Dolly! last weekend. It´s a new production that was supposed to run only over the summer but it was quite succesful so it´s been prolonged and they now play it like 4 times a month.
I love old school musicals and I saw a perfect Hello, Dolly! production in Music Theater Karlin few years back. It was a successful show that run from 1996 to 2003 and Jitka Molavcová got Thalie award for the best actress in musical for her role of Dolly Levi. I have a really fond memories of this production and so I was interested to see the new one with the great Ivana Chýlková as Dolly.
I didn´t want to spend too much money on it so I bought the cheapest tickets to 28 row but we were moved to 13 row with a great view. That was neat.
The Hybernia theater is much smaller than the Music Theater Karlin and so the musical had to be altered. I remember in Karlin, in the big restaurant scene, there was like 20 waiters, having a great chorus number, in Hybarnia there were literally 5 waiters altogether. But I didn´t mind this, what I had a bigger problem with was that even the story was shortened, as far as I remember. The whole show was 2:15 hours long, the intermission included. I´m pretty sure the Karlin production had 3 hours at least. The shortened story felt shallow, somehow. I felt the story about Dolly and Vandelgerder was in background.
But I liked the actors and their performances and the show had a nice set and some very funny scenes and smart direction in some moments, so the overall feeling about the production was positive and quite enjoyable.
