Hannah Jo Anderson
A woman behind a desk appears to be harassing a man who has fallen down on the floor.
Tracy Michelle Arnold, top, as Dolly Gallagher Levi, a professional meddler, and Colin Covert as down-on-his-luck store clerk Cornelius Hackl in APT's 'The Matchmaker.'
In the second act of the American Players Theatre’s production of Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, down-on-his-luck store clerk Cornelius Hackl proclaims, “Isn’t the world full of wonderful things.”
Over the course of four acts and nearly three hours, a hyper-talented cast proves that spending a summer evening watching one of the country’s finest theater companies perform under the stars and in the woods of rural Spring Green ranks among those wonderful things.
Set in New York circa 1896, The Matchmaker is one of Madison-born Wilder’s funniest, most farcical plays. Yet it’s also imbued with enough emotion and life-affirming delight to encourage audiences to embrace their own less glorious moments.
The Matchmaker’s history can be traced back to a one-act British play in 1835; Wilder Americanized an Austrian playwright’s version into The Merchant of Yonkers in 1938 and then ultimately reworked it into The Matchmaker, which debuted on Broadway in 1954.
APT’s version crackles from the get-go, as wealthy curmudgeon and Yonkers shop owner Horace Vandergelder (Triney Sandoval) attempts to sneak his niece, Ermengarde (Kelly Simmons), to an undisclosed location in the hopes of spoiling her plans to marry artist Ambrose Kemper (Jonathan Gardner). But Horace has wedding bells on his own mind, as the widower aims to propose later that day to Manhattan milliner Irene Molloy (Phoebe González). She doesn’t love him, but she also wants out of the hat business.
Enter “The Matchmaker”: Dolly Gallagher Levi, a professional meddler with a knack for rearranging other people’s lives. (She also eventually became the inspiration for the blockbuster 1964 Broadway musical, Hello, Dolly!). Played to perfection by Tracy Michelle Arnold — resplendent with red hair that appears to change shades as the sun goes down and that elegantly complements her character’s fanciful costumes — Dolly was friends with Horace’s late wife and now has her sights set on snagging him for herself. Dolly’s fibs to mislead Horace away from Irene eventually encompass the love interest trajectories of no fewer than seven characters, creating comic chaos and vibrant wit.
Enough plot twists, mistaken identity, and stage trickery ensue that it might be wise to take notes just to keep up. But that’s all part of the fun. As director Brian Cowing (who also is the artistic director of Children’s Theater of Madison) encourages audiences in the program notes: “Laugh loudly. Fall a little bit in love with the characters, with the language, with the simple, radical act of people finding each other.”
Cowing certainly found the right ensemble for this cast. It’s easy to fall under Arnold’s spell as she packs both glamour and grit into her version of Dolly. Similarly, Sandoval plays Horace with panache and precision. With slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair, a stately paunch, and mischievous facial expressions, he could have made the character insufferable. Instead, he allows Horace to elicit empathy from the audience. Karen Janes Woditsch, meanwhile, pulls double duty and steals every scene she’s in — first as Horace’s 80-year-old half-blind housekeeper and then as Miss Flora Van Huysen, Horace’s flighty, woe-is-me relative.
But it is Colin Covert’s portrayal of hapless Cornelius that emerges as The Matchmaker’s most inspired performance. As Horace’s bumbling employee who’s never kissed a girl, Cornelius initially lets his boss walk all over him. Soon enough, though, he throws caution to the wind by convincing his easily cowed co-worker, 17-year-old Barnaby Tucker (portrayed with wide-eyed exuberance by Trevyn Wong), to blow off work and accompany him to New York City, where the play’s final three acts are set. Covert’s sense of comedic timing and physical humor, anchored by Cornelius’s earnest ambitions to woo Irene (courtesy of more of Dolly’s relationship tampering) before Horace beats him to it, make it impossible not to root for his character’s happily ever after.
Dapper costumes, savvy sets, and strategic breaching of the fourth wall contribute to this staging of The Matchmaker’s feel-good spirit and the enduring hope that love, adventure, and other wonderful things await all of us — if we’re open to accepting them.
The Matchmaker runs through Oct. 2
