Hello, Everett: Musical manages to seem original

Imagine this scenario: You're an actress facing your biggest scene in the show. You're at the top of a landing with about 10 steps to descend. It's a musical number, so you have to dance-kick your way down the steps without holding the banisters. You have to do all this in high heels and a heavy gown with a train.

Oh, and you can't look down.

What are you thinking at a time like that?

Let Peggy O'Connell tell you. She's played Dolly Gallagher Levi for 6 ½ weeks in the Village Theatre's Issaquah production of "Hello, Dolly." Sure-footed performances have made her insightful.

"I think that's a very important moment when she comes out on those steps," O'Connell said. "She's coming out of mourning [after her husband's death], where she starts to loosen the grip on the past and gets in the moment."

It turns out that O'Connell never had to worry about those steps.

"Bill [Forrester, the set designer] put a lot of thought into the rise of those steps, how many inches they would be," she said. "I always know I'm in good, safe hands."

O'Connell will bring those dance kicks to Snohomish County this week when the production moves to the Everett Performing Arts Center. The show opens at 8 p.m. Friday for a run through July 16.

With strong work by the ensemble, and without the obeisance that usually dogged Carol Channing and other actresses in the role, the musical's structure and comic farce are much clearer. O'Connell, a Broadway and regional-theater veteran, brings a freshness to the role of Dolly, twinkling and smiling while plotting marriages.

"I think that she's someone who goes all over and mingles with everybody," said O'Connell. "She's got a touch of shanty Irish in her."

Dolly pursues Horace Vandergelder (John Patrick Lowrie), a prosperous but stingy merchant of Yonkers, N.Y. He's a widower looking for a wife, whose desired qualities (cleaning drains, dumping ashes, cleaning the stable and shoeing the mare) he espouses in "It Takes a Woman."

Billie Wildrick plays the widow Irene Molloy, a hard-working milliner who seems resigned to the role of Mrs. Vandergelder, even though she doesn't love the man.

Class distinctions are related to money or the lack of it: Greg Allen plays Horace's oppressed and quietly rebellious employee, Cornelius, who cuts his workday short to escape to the big city of New York with his sidekick Barnaby for some fun and romance. Running into Horace turns their fun into a nightmare; they "vanish" in full view of him in one hilarious scene.

Before the show is over, Dolly has put things right. To land Horace for herself, she not only slanders Irene but also runs an early version of speed dating, putting him together with such exotic birds as the vacant-eyed Ernestina (Bobbi Kotula). After all these heart tussles, is it any wonder that Horace winds up bewitched, bothered and bewildered?

These actors make the show refreshingly original — no small feat for a musical written more than 40 years ago.

"I was so lucky to have Peggy," said director-choreographer Steve Tomkins. "She's a woman who commands the stage. She's so open and vulnerable; she sings from her toes, opens up her body."

O'Connell, a Minneapolis native, had acted in many Seattle shows before meeting comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who helped her book her musical nightclub act into The Improv in New York. She was seen by casting people and got called for "My One and Only," going on the road with the show with Tommy Tune.

Tomkins had O'Connell in mind when he selected "Hello, Dolly" for the Village Theatre. The two go back more than 30 years to their days at the Empty Space Theatre in Seattle.

For O'Connell, singing "It's so nice to be back home where I belong" has a personal meaning.

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com