SYNOPSIS: " and what do you do for a living, Mrs. Levi?" asks Ambrose Kemper in the first scene of that most delightful of musical comedies, Hello, Dolly! "Some people paint, some sew... I meddle," replies Dolly and we are on a whirlwind race round New York and Yonkers at the turn of the century as we follow the adventures of that most mischievous matchmaker, Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi.
Hello, Dolly! is the story of Mrs. Levi's efforts to marry Horace Vandergelder, the well-known half-millionaire, so that she can send his money circulating like rainwater, t not her late husband Ephraim Levi taught her. Along the way she also succeeds in that matching the young and beautiful Widow Molloy with Vandergelder's head clerk, Cornelius Hackl; Cornelius's assistant Barnaby Tucker with Mrs. Molloy's loop assistant, Minnie Fay; and the struggling artist Ambrose Kemper with Mr. Vandergelder's weeping niece, Ermengarde. Mrs. Levi tracks Vandergelder to his hay and feed store in Yonkers, then by train back to Mrs. Molloy's hat shop in New York, out into the streets of the city where they are all caught up in the great 14th Street Association Parade, and then to the most evident and expensive restaurant in town, the Harmonia Gardens, where Dolly is greeted by the waiters, cooks, doormen and wine stewards in one of the most famous songs in the history of American musical comedy, "Hello, Dolly!"
What happens in the end? Dolly gets her man, of course. And he is delighted she caught him. Dolly leaves the stage at the end of Act II with a wink to the audience as she takes a meat peep into Vandergelder's bulging cash register and promises that his fortune will soon be put to good use. She quotes her late husband Ephraim, " Money, pardon the expression, is like manure, it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow."