QUINCY — Audiences can put on their Sunday clothes and cast themselves back to the Gay Nineties this month as Quincy Valley Allied Arts brings “Hello, Dolly!” to the stage.  

Deborah Roeber and Paul Slager will play the lead roles of fast-talking matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi and curmudgeonly “half-millionaire” shopkeeper Horace Vandergelder, respectively. 

“It’s really ambitious for Dolly,” said Assistant Director Lora Allen at rehearsal Thursday. “She has probably 1,000 more words than anyone, a lot of memorizing, and she’s doing amazingly. And vocally, it’s great songs and a lot of singing for her … She lights up the stage and everyone’s just falling in line with her.” 

“Debbie as Dolly is just excellent,” Slager said. “She’s a Dolly personality, just really high-energy and upbeat and positive.” 

“Hello, Dolly!” debuted in 1963 with Carol Channing in the title role, replaced by Barbra Streisand for the big-budget 1969 film version. It’s the story of four couples – or rather, prospective couples – in 1890s New York. Dolly is, in her own words, a woman who arranges things, principally as a matchmaker, and the play opens as she’s parlaying her considerable skills of persuasion to cement a match between Ermengarde (Kaitlyn Coleman) and Ambrose (Paul Roylance) under the nose of Vandergelder, Ermengarde’s uncle. Meanwhile, Dolly’s also arranged a meeting between Vandergelder and widowed hat shop owner Irene Molloy (Lydia Harris). But then Vandergelder’s clerks Cornelius Hackl (Taggart Hodges) and Barnaby Tucker (Taylor Street) cross paths with Irene and her assistant Minnie Fay (Hailey Beegle), and romance rears its entertaining head. So where does that leave Vandergelder? And how will Dolly, lonely and impoverished since her husband passed, find a match for herself? 

“Hello, Dolly!” is an interwoven and fast-paced story, peppered with songs like the chauvinistic “It Takes a Woman,” the high-stepping ensemble number “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” Minnie’s wistful “Ribbons Down my Back” and the title number “Hello, Dolly!,”  an anthem to the lady at the center of it all.  

“When you realize it's kind of an exaggerated story, Dolly is over the top, everybody's over the top, really, then I think it becomes so much more fun,” Slager said. 

While Dolly and Vandergelder are nominally the lead roles, the interactions between Cornelius and Irene and between Barnaby and Minnie aren’t relegated to the background. The four actors are good friends, Harris said.  

“We’ve developed a really good friendship between the four of us who are in scenes together, on stage and off stage,” she said. “We go hang out a lot.” 

Harris has done two other musicals for QVAA and acted in a community theater on the west side years ago, she said. But the lonely widow Irene, who hates the hat business and would love to release her inner vamp if society weren’t so stern, is new to her. 

“This show has been so different from what I’m used to,” she said. I’m more of a belter, a vivacious character. So it’s interesting to be in a different element and contain myself in a different way.” 

That’s a contrast to the mousy, twittery Minnie, said Beegle, who has also done two musicals with QVAA and played Belle in the QHS production of “Beauty and the Beast” in 2023. 

“(Minnie) is very much a rule follower in the beginning,” Beegle said. “She’s like, ‘I don’t want to be around men. I don’t want them in the hat shop.’ And then here comes Barnaby … I like how my character kind of unwinds.” 

The timing of “Hello, Dolly!” has been tricky, Allen said, because it’s coming earlier in the year than QVAA usually does musicals. That meant rehearsals had to go on hiatus during the holidays, a week at Thanksgiving and two weeks at Christmas.  

“And then there are a lot of colds going around,” she said. “So we have people getting sick … and we miss them when they're not here, because it throws everything off a little bit. But that happens and it’s to be expected.” 

“Today we added costumes for the first time,” Slager said. “We've been adding sets every (rehearsal), and (now) when we’re two weeks out, we’ve got to fine tune everything and get things nailed down, and get the orchestra out front on Monday, and we'll be good to go. It's so many moving parts.” 

Slager said the real stars are the ensemble. 

“They've worked way more hours than I have on their dancing and singing and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “My hat’s off to that ensemble.” 

‘Hello, Dolly!’ 

7:30 p.m. Jan. 24, 25 and 31 and Feb. 1 and 7, 2 p.m. Feb. 8 

Quincy High School Performing Arts Center 

403 Jackrabbit St. NE 

Director: Tom Parrish 

Assistant Director: Lora Allen 

Choreographer: Megan Stoaks 

Musical Director: Allison Pheasant 

Orchestra Director: Riley Youngren 

Tickets and info: www.quincy-valley-allied-arts.org 

    Horace Vandergelder (Paul Slager) gives instructions to his clerks Cornelius Hackl (Taggart Hodges) and Barnaby Tucker (Taylor Street) in a rehearsal of the Quincy Valley Allied Arts production of “Hello, Dolly!”
  

    Milliner Irene Molloy, (Lydia Harris, left) explains to her assistant Minnie Fay why she’s considering marrying Horace Vandergelder, whom she doesn’t really love.
  

    The ensemble performers of “Hello, Dolly!” kick up their heels and go on the town in their Sunday clothes.


  

    Dolly (Deborah Roeber) assures Horace Vandergelder that the woman he intends to marry almost certainly did not murder her first husband.
  

    Dolly (Deborah Roeber) introduces herself to Yonkers, New York as “a woman who arranges things.”