Wilder’s wit is timeless in marvelous ‘Matchmaker’ at APT | Entertainment

The Cap Times is an independent newsroom serving Madison and Wisconsin. Sign up for the Food & Culture newsletter for exclusive weekly insight.

No production of “The Matchmaker” put up in the year of Beyonce’s Act III can exist outside the shadow of “Hello, Dolly!”

Watching Thornton Wilder’s wonderfully witty comedy on the hill at American Players Theatre, where it runs through Oct. 2, I felt like the kid who saw “Wicked” before “The Wizard of Oz.”

Blame Jerry Herman, whose faithful musical adaptation of “The Matchmaker” makes every other line sound like a musical cue. When Dolly Levi declares, “I have always been a woman who arranges things,” it strikes an opening chord in my mind. “Go and get your Sunday clothes on” makes my head swivel. Is a dance about to start?

I’m not the only one. Based on the chatter in the seats, if Barbara Streisand (Dolly in the 1969 Oscar-winning film) could be summoned like the Candyman, she’d have instantly joined the opening night crowd.

This blurring of adaptations is part of the lore of “The Matchmaker.” Wilder’s life-affirming tale of a woman who meddles for “profit and pleasure” was based on an 1830s English one-act called “A Day Well Spent,” then an Austrian farce, then a 1938 adaptation by Wilder called “The Merchant of Yonkers.” That one flopped.  

With more rewrites, Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” became a bona fide Broadway hit in 1954. Herman’s musical debuted 10 years later.

At APT, the sun rises and sets on Tracy Michelle Arnold’s Dolly Gallagher Levi, who strides into Horace Vandergelder’s feed store with a dazzling smile to match the stage lights.

Arnold’s low, slightly gravelly voice (rest in glory, Carol Channing) keeps up a running commentary on everyone’s affairs, whether they concern her or not. Arnold’s Dolly is chaotic and bossy and infuriating. I would follow her onto the Titanic.  

Our first would-be romantic is Mr. Vandergelder, an irritable, wealthy shop owner played by Triney Sandoval. A widower, Vandergelder has decided to marry again, mainly to get his house in order.

He intends to propose to Manhattan milliner Irene Molloy (Phoebe González), herself a widow. She is willing to marry him, mainly because she hates hats.

Vandergelder’s clerks take the boss’s absence as a chance to have an adventure in the city — their code word for when adventure is afoot is “pudding!” When hapless Cornelius Hackl (an earnest Colin Covert) and his teenage coworker Barnaby Tucker (Trevyn Wong, a perfect mimic) take shelter from their employer in Irene’s shop, sparks fly.

Brian Cowing’s playful, hyper-specific direction of “The Matchmaker” sparkles in scenes like this. The boys duck under tables and into closets, scurrying around while Dolly watches with amusement. González has a gift for joyful chaos, as Irene pulls her own clerk (Ama J. Kuwonu) and the bumbling boys toward a night out at the ritzy Harmonia Gardens.

Wilder lets several characters break the fourth wall, and none do it more smoothly than Brian Mani. He plays a minor character, a man of many talents named Malachi, whom Vandergelder has just hired. “You’re surprised?” Mani says, as he turns away from the scene he’s in to face the audience. Malachi has a word of advice, and it’s “One vice at a time.”

Cowing’s animated, silly staging of “The Matchmaker” draws on musical theater choreography and classic farce. When Dolly leads her troupe to Manhattan, cast members assemble in the aisle to form a train. An elderly aunt (Karen Janes Woditsch) pops up from a sofa and the audience gasps — her dress is the same pattern as the couch. (Tracy Dorman’s costume designs favor huge puffy sleeves and lots of lace; in Act II, she makes Dolly a vision in deep teal.)

Scenic designer Nathan Stuber adorns the set with pops of magenta above floor tiles that gleam blue and white under Michael A. Peterson’s warm lighting. It’s a charming place to spend a few hours.

“The world is full of wonderful things,” several characters say throughout “The Matchmaker,” echoed in composer Joe Cerqua’s musical refrain. This summer, one of those wonderful things is this very show. It’s nearly three hours of proof that Wilder’s wit is timeless. Pudding!

Lindsay Christians is the food and culture editor at the Cap Times. She earned a master’s degree in theater research from UW-Madison and has been a member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association since 2007. 

Email story ideas and tips to Lindsay at [email protected].

Please consider supporting Lindsay’s work by becoming a Cap Times member or sponsor. Sustaining local journalism in Madison depends on readers like you.