165. The Week in Dolly 🎶🚂
The world is full of wonderful things.
Before this week’s post: I am moving our scheduled E.R. guest post to next Wednesday, so you can enjoy it throughout the July 4th weekend and cool off with some premium 90’s television!
And: I am featured in ’s first zine, Howl & Hold Grief Zine Issue #1! You can pick that up as an electronic copy, print copy, or bundle with stickers here!
Michael Dale took me to the Transport Group annual fundraiser at Carnegie Hall this week, which featured selections from Hello, Dolly!: the Broadway numbers, those written just for Ethel Merman and excised from future productions, the songs penned for Barbra in her Gene Kelly-directed turn as Mrs. Levi, and (and!!!) some of the dance numbers as originally choreographed by Gower Champion, who originally directed the musical and performed the same two-handed duties for Bye Bye Birdie and 42nd Street. I was not expecting the Waiters’ Gallop on the Carnegie Hall stage, ticker-taped with what must have been a 60-wide chorus, every instrument you can think of including at least one train whistle, and Jennifer Simard’s naturals (in a performance of *Beanie Feldstein voice1* the titular song stepped into with less than 24 hours’ notice after Beth Leavel woke up with COVID2).
They did the Waiters’ Gallop.
Jennifer Simard’s naturals were what, despite her not being named in the printed program, announced to me “hey, that’s Jennifer Simard” when she swanned from stage left to do her routine. (via)
I attended six (SIX) performances of the 2017 Hello, Dolly! revival: two on Broadway with Bette Midler, one with Bernadette Peters and Victor Garber, one with my favorite Dolly and confirmed Zohran Mamdani voter Donna Murphy, one in Bostin with Carolee Carmello, and one in Philly with Betty Buckley.
The reason I traveled across three states to see this production six times, and landed three of the songs from the musical in my Apple Music top 25 that year, is because of the train.
Here is the train. You should watch this.
The first time I saw Dolly, I did not know about the train and had only heard the title track and the train made me gasp and boil over into a hot, delighted cry. I hid those tears from my mom, who wouldn’t have gotten it, and who would have stage-whisper scolded me for expressing emotion in front of my Italian aunts and embarrassing her. (I have written before about how Italian women are not allowed to cry.) It was the magic of theater, yes, and it was the hope of the song that got me, I realized after I dropped my mom off to my dad’s waiting Lincoln and headed home. Just a month or two into living on my own, my first time paying my rent, feeling safe where I lived, the song’s hope in breaking out to parts unknown stirred me, even though my stuffed whale at Barnum’s museum was just a place with only my name on the mailbox, a place where I could lock my door without my mother picking it during the night. I took my paycheck from my first executive assistant job and bought a ticket so I could enjoy the show again in my own way. I cried without fear. I cried without fear five of the six times I saw that damn train chug across the stage (for some reason, the Philly touring performance didn’t do it for me, maybe because Philly, a “heart place” as my friend
calls it, already feels like where I’d be headed on that steamer). Bootlegged recordings of musicals are uploaded on YouTube and titled “slime tutorials,” - these exist of Dolly, one is right above this paragraph, but I avoided them - it can’t compare, it can’t compete.On Monday night, a sea of dancers in coral reef hues strode out like paper dolls in puppet theater across the stage, and seeing this for the first time in seven years outside of my own memories made me gasp. Cry. Express gratitude that my workday had been so busy I hadn’t time to put on makeup; I would have coated Michael and my fingertips and the seat with eyeliner and blush. Get it.
I regained my composure by feeling a bit let down that the evening was proceeding without any mention of Gavin Creel, who opened the 2017 revival as Cornelius Hackl - Santino Fontana performed the track on Monday, and I would have assumed that he or someone performing that night gave some small nod to Gavin, whose loss shook the theater community and who comprised the final photo in this year’s Tony Awards memoriam.
And then Marilyn Maye walked out.
Michael Dale LOVES Marilyn Maye, the 97-year-old lounge powerhouse who at (again) 97 STILL performs - standing - with a rich, resonant voice entirely unlike the light, whispery tone I shamefully expected.
Macon Prickett filmed this video posted to Twitter, and I thank him for it profusely:
The evening’s performances, emceed by journalist Frank DiLella and frequent Dolly director, performer, even sometimes Dolly herself Lee Roy Reams, were announced only in who would perform, not which number each Broadway luminary would cover. At their intoned word “miraculous,” surely to be followed by the alliterative Marilyn Mae, Michael crowed and clapped. I have, in over five years of attending monthly if not biweekly performances of every type with Michael, seen him that catalyzed into joy. “Before the Parade Passes By” is a song that fits its title without tricks or entendre: Dolly Levi, a widow who has retreated from love and much of what life can offer, asks her late husband for his blessing to return to the world, to return to the hope and hunger she had as a young woman, the woman he fell in love with. It is a glorious song, a special gift for an “actress of a certain age” to get to sing and with which to close act one. For a nigh centenarian to perform it, in a beautiful spangly jacket and bold red lip…of course I wept. Michael will have to forgive me for saying this - we both cried. I will likely recall nothing more so from this evening than preemptively tucking my program pamphlet and phone under my armpits five seconds before the song concluded, knowing I would HAVE to, I was spiritually COMPELLED to, leap to my feet in an ovation the moment she closed her lips. Every attendee in Carnegie Hall joined me.
Michael Dale is the most giving friend I have ever had. It’s funny, but despite our what, 31-year age difference, he tells and shows me frequently that I teach him as much as he teaches me. As we sat before the show, I discussed some of the tenets of the mayoral primary of which he had not been aware, and he in turn told me how Lee Roy Reams’s character in Applause was revealed as the first openly gay character in a Broadway musical (he tells Lauren Bacall he can’t go out with her friends, he has a date'; Bacall rejoins “Well, bring him along!”). He’s the Doc Brown to my Marty McFly. I adore him.
To watch:
I screamed when a simple tweet saying “oh my god” from
confirmed that Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral primary:
Watch this DELIGHTFUL interview with, hopefully, New York City’s next mayor. Pookie.
Play this at my funeral, deadass:
These prosthetic-and-tablescaping photo stories by Nadia Lee Cohen are really detailed and evocative.
To read:
Last week’s post:
164. I was supposed to get married a year ago today.
Unrelated to the hot goss but important: come hang out with me at Hoboken’s pride events this month!
I will respect you less if I find out you use ChatGPT. If any respect is left at all.
Read this, the slides and the caption. Essential (glowing, radioactive) critique of one of my favorite artists of any plane, Elliott Smith:
Further great critique (this time of momfluencers and the performance of not giving a damn from
:
And on Laura Ingalls Wilder: “During the reconstruction of Japan following World War II, the American military had Wilder's books translated and distributed amongst millions of displaced Japanese citizens, many of whom were starving. The cynicism of a country weaponizing the myth of American individualism in order to sell American democracy to a country they've decimated is almost stunning:”
“To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the “TheoBros: These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.” by
“Every Place Is the Same Now: With a phone, anywhere else is always just a tap away.” by
This is literally just Simone:
(When we do mwah KEES.)
This is literally just Lugosi:
And a bonus from auntie
:
Actually my babies:
Various and sundry:
One of my favorite things about my ex-husband was that he was as sentimental about abandoned stuffed animals as I was. We once found a reindeer Squishmallow disposed of outside our apartment building’s back door, took one look at each other, and grabbed her, plastic-bagged her for a few days and then coated her in hairspray, and when she made it through our version of Ellis Island quarantine named her Noel3. She now enjoys a lot of chicken naps on my living room couch. I’d have sent this to Matt, but I am sending it to you instead:
My OCD:
I hope this is you in the week ahead, with no rips in your tights:
Love you shimmying bitches,
TG
I hope she recovers permanently and quickly but
For years, our local summer theater performed "Hello Dolly," but I never went to see it. After watching the videos, I think I might.
I deadass always just assumed Hello, Dolly was a musical about Dolly Parton because why wouldn’t it be?