Jim Carter, who famously played Carson the master butler on Downton Abbey, clearly was taken by the leading artist giving a terrifically moving performance as Dolly Gallagher Levi upon the London Palladium stage. “That’s my wife,” he declared during the interval.
Indeed it was. Imelda Staunton was creating a gold-standard portrait of the meddlesome fixer at the heart of the landmark musical Hello, Dolly!
created by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart from Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker. “It’s a brilliant production,” Carter told me. “The problem is,” he continued, ”I can’t see anyone else on stage.
I can only look at her. I’m sitting there going, ‘Wow!’” Totally understandable, because the other 2,200 members of the audience were falling in love with her as well. “I hadn’t realized the show was this funny and this romantic,” observed theatrical knight Derek Jacobi, who was seated across the aisle from Carter and his daughter Bessie Carter, best known for her role as Prudence Featherington in Bridgerton.
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