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Hello again, Dolly

One of the all-time Broadway classics, Hello, Dolly! comes to the Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center with one creative alteration.

TARPON SPRINGS - She's turning 40 and been played by everyone from Carol Channing to Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable and Pearl Bailey.

She's Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi, the sweetly scheming matchmaker in Hello, Dolly!, Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart's rousing 1964 Broadway tribute to female wiles and wisdom.

On Thursday, the musical favorite will open for a two-week run at the Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center, with Val Sanford (Abigale Adams in 1776) in the title role.

"Val is a kind of jolly Dolly," said Dick Poole, who is directing and making costumes for the 32-member cast. "She's got a lot of personality. She is a good actress."

In Hello, Dolly!, Mrs. Levi is trying to find the perfect match for the widowed half-a-millionaire, Horace VanderGelder (Dan Maxwell, Ben Franklin in 1776; title role in Zorba).

She considers the lovely young Irene Molloy (Dominica S. Reed, Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), but ultimately decides that she wants VanderGelder for herself. Meanwhile, she helps VanderGelder's lovestruck niece, Ermengarde (Katie DeHetre), connect with the impoverished artist Ambrose (Cody Carlson), much to the uncle's consternation.

There are subplots involving VanderGelder's overworked, underpaid employees Cornelius (Don Edmiston, Beauregard Burnside in Mame) and Barnaby (Keith Surplus, Lun Tha in The King and I), who blow up a stack of canned tomatoes so they can get a day off to go to New York, and her phony pairing of the half-a-millionaire with the gauche Ernestina Money (Carly Caza).

"I'm concocting a something horrible costume for Ernestina," Poole said. "We want her to look ridiculous."

Because of casting constrictions, Poole has eliminated the popular dance number known as the Waiters' Gallop at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant where Dolly takes VanderGelder to look over his romantic prospects.

"We didn't have men dancers - they're so hard to find in community theater - but we couldn't eliminate the dance because a lot of dialogue comes between the parts of the dance," Poole said. Instead, choreographer Jane Russell Geddings turned the Waiters' Gallop into a comedy scene, some of it playing on the difference in the waiters' heights, and coached eight young women dancers to fill in the gaps, Poole said.

"You have never seen a Waiters' Gallop like this one," he said. "But I think it will work out quite well. It will be different anyhow. It's kind of interesting to do something different once in a while."

This isn't Poole's first time directing the show.

"It's been 30 years since I have done Dolly," he said. "I did it in Hawaii. There were lots of male dancers there."

Even without the dancing waiters, Poole isn't cutting a line or a song from the original show.

"It's a relatively short musical," he said, coming in at about two hours, 15 minutes. "And it's a lot of fun."

WHAT: Hello, Dolly!

WHERE: Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center, 324 E Pine St., Tarpon Springs.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Sept. 11, 16, 17 and 18; 2 p.m. Sept. 12 and 19.

TICKETS: $18 adults; $16 students and center members. Call (727) 942-5605