HVS goes to source of hit film shot in Garrison
During the Great Depression, Thornton Wilder wrote a play called The Merchant of Yonkers, which flopped. Revising it in the 1950s as The Matchmaker, it might also have passed as The Taming of the Scrooge, as miserly and miserable businessman Horace Vandergelder repents at the end.
This is the raw material that Broadway impresario David Merrick turned into the musical Hello, Dolly!, which debuted in 1964, won 10 Tony Awards and ran for 2,844 performances (The Matchmaker played 486 times on Broadway).
Though the story is set in Yonkers (and Manhattan), producers for the 1969 Hollywood version shot several scenes at Garrison’s Landing in part because Vandergelder indicates that the train station is less than a minute from his house.
A yellowing window decoration created for the movie set is still preserved on the ground floor of a brick office building that served as an inn during the 1800s, when the play takes place.
The Matchmaker is a subversive screed against greed that critiques capitalism, champions adventure (mentioned 17 times) and calls for the redistribution of wealth: Money, says Nance Williamson, who portrays Dolly Levi in the ongoing Hudson Valley Shakespeare production, “is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.”
Letting emerging painter Ambrose Kemper (Blaize Adler-Ivanbrook) in on her plan to marry Vandergelder and free up the hoarder’s lucre, she says that the value of cash is to trickle “like rainwater. It should be flowing down among the people.”
The play also explores the toll that work takes on the toilers, unable to live a life with much leisure or pleasure. When Manhattan hat shop owner Irene Molloy (Helen Cespedes) loses herself dancing and imbibing at the fancy Harmonia Gardens restaurant, she says, “to think that this goes on in hundreds of places every night while I sit at home darning my stockings.”
It’s worse for Cornelius Hackl (Carl Howell), chief clerk at Vandergelder’s hay, feed and provisions store, who awakens at 6 a.m. and closes shop at 9 p.m. He sleeps in the bran room and only gets Sundays off.
When Hackl, 33, asks for another evening to himself after getting an ersatz promotion, Vandergelder (Kurt Rhoads) tells his charge that he should get up earlier and close the shop at 10 p.m.: “If I’d had evenings free [as a young man], I wouldn’t be what I am now!” he thunders, with irony.
The grueling work schedule hinders Hackl’s personal life and he finds it difficult to speak with women in a social setting. In rebellion, he talks his apprentice Barnaby Tucker (Tyler Bey) into playing hooky and heading into Manhattan — vowing not to return until they’ve kissed a woman.
According to the script notes, “farces are notoriously tricky to stage.” After spotting Vandergelder (who is visiting the city to propose to Molloy), they duck into her hat shop. Things get hairy when the wayward clerks are inevitably discovered.
As directed by Davis McCallum, HVS’s artistic director, several scenes feature the stage and house filled with actors screaming, running amok and almost colliding with each other.
The book is peppered with witty jokes and pithy insights, but the main comedic thrust rests in the situations and shenanigans. As Miss Flora Van Huysen, upon whose townhouse everyone descends during the wee hours, Katie Hartke channels a humorous Nora Desmond from Sunset Boulevard.
Like The Comedy of Errors, the other offering at HVS through early August, The Matchmaker unfolds like a zany sitcom and concludes on a high note: Clerk Hackl finds a wife, the artist Kemper is approved to marry Vandergelder’s niece and Dolly gets to spread the manure around. All’s well that ends well.
Hudson Valley Shakespeare is located at 2015 Route 9 in Philipstown. Tickets are $10 to $100 at hvshakespeare.org or at the door. The Matchmaker runs on select evenings through Aug. 3.
