What we did, spring into summer. . . .

In all the productions of Hello, Dolly! I'd seen before this, my first live Matchmaker, Irene Molloy had never really come alive as a treasurable character. With Elizabeth Meadows Rouse as the hungry-for-life milliner, I was almost sad that she'd lose her Horace to Dolly. Together with Edwin C. Owens' robust portrayal of Vandergelder, the duo fairly well upstage diminutive Kirtan Coan in the title role. When Wilder's stage directions call for "minor convulsions" at the dire prospect of opening his wallet to Mrs. Levi, Owens goes so red amid his coughing and sneezing that I thought somebody would call for an ambulance. It's this sort of titanic discomfiture that tends to make Coan's Dolly seem, by comparison, more calculating and prudent than you might expect. But there is abundant resourcefulness in Coan's conniver to win our affections.