Season Select: The Matchmaker

The Matchmaker

By Thornton Wilder

Directed by Brian Cowing

Fast Facts

Playing: Hill Theatre | June 12 - October 2
Featuring: Tracy Michelle Arnold, Colin Covert, Phoebe González, Ama Kuwonu, Brian Mani, Triney Sandoval & Trevyn Wong
Genre: 20th century American comedy
Last Seen at APT: 2006
Go If You Liked: Fallen Angels (2025), Ring Round the Moon (2024), Our Town (2023)

About The Matchmaker

The larger-than-life character Dolly Gallagher Levi, the titular matchmaker in The Matchmaker, has lived many lives onstage, on screen and certainly on the town since Thornton Wilder first dreamt her up in 1938. Since then, Dolly, the curmudgeonly Horace Vandelgher and the whole Yonkers gang have traveled the world (perhaps universe?) thanks to the play’s success when it opened on Broadway in 1955, and the even more popular musical adaptation, Hello Dolly!, to follow in 1964.

For a theatrical dynasty so solidly anchored upon one mischievous lady in a hat, it's shocking to learn that the original source material of The Matchmaker had no matchmaker to speak of. John Oxenford, a prolific English playwright and critic, played progenitor with his comedic one-act, A Day Well Spent, in 1835. In this farce, the audience meets Bolt and Mizzle, two small-town apprentices who escape to London for a day while their boss, Mr. Cotton is out handling the marriage of his daughter.

Then in 1842, Johan Nestroy, an eminent Austrian comedic playwright, took A Day Well Spent and turned it into Einen Jux will er sich machen (“He wants to have some fun”), a three-act play with music peppered throughout. Bolt and Mizzle were now Weinberl and Christopherl, London swapped out for Vienna and more characters were added for romantic hilarity. The play was a hit in Vienna in part to its dashes of local humor and excellent German punwork.

Several decades and an ocean away, a young Thorton Wilder fell in love with studying German theatre. While Nestroy’s fame did not make the journey to the United States, Wilder found something special in Einen jux will er sich machen. In 1938, Wilder premiered two plays: Our Town in January and his Americanized spin on the Einen Jux will er sich machen called The Merchant of Yonkers in December. Merchant had a short (39 performances) but pivotal run as this was where the character of Dolly first made her entrance.

Two Pulitzer Prizes (Our Town, 1938 and The Skin of Our Teeth, 1942) and some minor rewrites later, Wilder premiered the reworked The Matchmaker on Broadway in 1955. It enjoyed a much longer run and a film adaptation in 1958.

In 1963, composer and lyricist Jerry Herman and book writer Michael Stewart adapted Wilder’s Matchmaker into their smash hit musical Hello, Dolly! Taking home the Tony Awards that season for Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Carol Channing, among others. While Wilder was supportive of the adaptation, he is quoted to have said “I love the musical, but I miss my beautiful words.” Hello, Dolly! Has preserved its place in musical theatre history as a groundbreaking and frequently revived cornerstone in the cannon.

Another movie adaptation, another play adaptation (On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard, notably sans-Dolly) and at least one song with a snake were to follow, bringing us to today. Over 190 years after Oxenfold’s original one act, the message, best summed up by the young Barnaby himself, continues to resonate with generation after generation.

“We all hope that in your lives you have just the right amount of sitting quietly at home, and just the right amount of adventure.”