A Review of The Matchmaker

by Gerry Roe 

Photo by Lily Allen-Duenas

Amana - It’s quite possible that some audience members will approach The Matchmaker as a sort of Hello, Dolly without songs. Delightful as the musical can be, I suspect the audiences will find the play stands on its own two feet and is, in fact, a richer experience. The story is much the same: Dolly Gallagher Levi has been engaged to find a second wife for the widowed Horace Vandergelder. In The Merchant of Yonkers, an earlier version of the play, Vandergelder, not Dolly, was the principal character. The plot of The Matchmaker is not well served by a summary. After a series of complications and “adventures,” Dolly accomplishes her task but the second Mrs. Vandergelder is not the beautiful young widow Vandergelder planned to make his wife.

ICCT Breathes Life and Laughter Into Wilder's Classic The Matchmaker

By James E. Trainor III
Photos by Paul VanDorpe

Howard Meadows, Catherine Shook, Lindsay Vincent,
Nicole DeSalle (foreground)

Iowa City - It's been nearly fifty years since Thorton Wilder's The Matchmaker first graced our stages, and though the play does show its age, it's also very clear why it has had such a long life. Wilder uses a very curious structure, which seems a bit quaint in our fast-paced times but works quite well: while the content of the plot is very much that of a farce, he stops the traditional breakneck pace of such a comedy to reflect on the action and the themes with short monologues directed to the audience. These are moments that Wilder uses to philosophize, and are full of some of his quotable platitudes (Take the line "Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow." Classic). These could be easily be stumbling blocks to a company, as they stop the action dead, but in the hands of director Rachael Lindhart they're refreshing breaths of air that invigorate the characters and invest us in the story. It's this careful attention to style and pace that makes ICCT's production of The Matchmaker such a charming evening of theatre.