Isn't the World Full of Wonderful Things? Indeed. Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker at APT!

Ed Heinzelman, An Intuitive Perspective

I was so totally looking forward to seeing The Matchmaker at American Players Theatre because I wasn’t familiar with anything by Wisconsin native Thornton Wilder beyond Our Town. From the preview posts and media, I knew it was a comedy. So I was also looking forward to some fun and laughter but I didn’t expect it to be totally HILARIOUS! And director Brian Cowing pulled out all of the stops and pushed the cast into a realm of slapstick, farce, and delightful merriment that as I said, I wasn’t really expecting. The timing and delivery is impeccable and brings each comedic moment to the fore. I LOVED THIS SHOW!

For those of you in a hurry, short review: The Matchmaker is a marriage of a Shakespeare comedy: mistaken identities, confused goals and aims, cross dressing, misdirection, and an end that ends well; versus an Oscar Wilde treatise: precise language, class idiosyncrasies, puns, jokes due to misplaced environments, and of course, fun at the expense of social convention. And from both writers: the very human and desperate longing for love and personal relationships by people who don’t know exactly what they are looking for.

Now, on with our adventure. PUDDING. YKIYK

So where did The Matchmaker come from. Originally Wilder wrote a comedy in 1938 named The Merchant of Yonkers. It was based on a 1842 play by Austrian playwright Max Reinhardt called He’ll Have Himself a Good Time. Wilder’s comedy was a huge flop. But in the 1950s there was some renewed interest in the play, so Wilder rewrote and reworked it into The Matchmaker. And in the rewrite the focus shifted to the matchmaker, a widow, Dolly Gallagher Levi.

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