Little Old New York

Hello, Dolly!, a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, has eye appeal, ear appeal, love appeal and laugh appeal, but its most insinuative charm is its nostalgic appeal. When Dolly Levi (Carol Channing), widow and matchmaker, fondles a cash register after announcing that she plans to marry its owner, she carries the mind back to a time when women needed and cherished men for their money, and in a day when wives sometimes earn as much or more than their husbands, that image is strangely endearing. The curmudgeonly businessman who loathed culture, spurned pleasure and lived to grind his employees under heel turns up in Dolly as Horace Vandergelder (David Burns), the matchmaker's mate-to-be, and announces with refreshing pride that he is "rich, friendless, and mean, which in Yonkers is about as far as you can go."

The clown in Carol Channing sometimes upstages the actress, but this show thrives on her kind of showoff. David Burns may be the only man alive who can bark through his nose. Gower Champion keeps the choreography winging. His agile, toe-perfect dance company spends so much time off the ground that it should get flight pay.

Hello, Dolly! does occasionally get bogged in a plot hole, and the score fills a function more often than it casts a spell. But with Oliver Smith's evocative lithograph-like settings and Freddy Wittop's costumes, which gleam like spring tulips against the backdrop of brownstones, there is no handsomer way to visit Little Old New York.

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