Hello, Dolly!, London Palladium review - Imelda Staunton makes every line a deal-broker

Jerry Herman is the king of pep. Way too much of it in the first 20 minutes of the recent revue Jerry’s Girls had me screaming for a breather, but here the opening cavalcade, gorgeous overture included, intoxicates thanks to Dominic Cooke‘s razor-sharp direction. And the two torch songs, "Before the Parade Passes By" and the title number, begin in pathos before Imelda Staunton flashes her high-heeled party shoes.

Consider the context: a widow of advancing years wants a second chance to be at the centre of things in 1890s New York. Marriage-broker Dolly Gallagher Levi isn’t your usual leading lady in a musical, and Staunton (pictured below) fits the bill more plausibly and poignantly than the incomparable but surely too youthful (25-year-old) Barbra Streisand in the delirious film (Carol Channing created the role on stage in 1964).

Staunton even tunes in to a touch of Streisand’s nasal quality for sentiment, but otherwise makes the role her own special creation (the "Parade" song, wonderfully done, is the equivalent of "I Am What I Am" in La Cage aux Folles). Is there any actor who can spin straw into gold quite the way she does with the dialogue? Timing is perfect, especially when Dolly is at her most pattery; who wouldn’t buy what she has to offer?

While the musical numbers never pall, the spoken text of Michael Stewart's mostly sassy book can lapse into the generic. Though Jenna Russell phrases the song lines classily as Irene Molloy, a second widow of independent means whom Dolly does down for her own advantage to prospective husband Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman) – avoid her chowder, eat out to stay alive – the scene in her hatshop is clunky operetta farce: the tightfisted capitalist's undervalued clerks Cornelius Hackl (Harry Hepple, pointedly geeky) and Barnaby Tucker (Tyrone Huntley, sweet, the two pictured below with Nyman), passed off as rich men about town, hide in a wardrobe and under the table, narrowly avoiding detection by their boss to postpone a denouement of sorts in Act Two. It's fascinating to read in the programme of Hello, Dolly!'s genealogy, from a one-act English farce through Nestroy's 1842 musical play about the two clerks on the razzle (remember Stoppard's adaptation?) to Thornton Wilder's two stage versions (enter Dolly, a wild success in the hands of Ruth Gordon). Nyman delivers the half-millionaire's thoughts on compliant wives (of its time) and money-making (very much today's America too) with panache, though the American accent sometimes slips. Hepple characterises the 33-year old virgin store clerk well without the irritant factor of the film's Michael Crawford – who can at least dance – though the juve lead Ambrose is a cipher and three smaller ladies' roles prove thankless work for Emily Lane, Jodie Jacobs and Emily Langham; all do the stock stuff perfectly well. The ensemble's the thing: they sing full-bloodedly, and the dancing features several long-legged, handsome men who gild the waiters' sequences, deliciously choreographed by Bill Deamer. While Staunton provides the initial pathos, a vision in green, for "Hello, Dolly!", it's their antics which help raise the bittersweet number to the sublime. Refunds are in order If you don't feel you've got your money's worth from the title number alone, and you don't get a high from it; no takers  expected (waiters, though not, alas, greened Dolly, pictured below; the production images miss some of the most photogenic scenes).

But then everything about this producton is fine-tuned. The orchestra under Nicholas Skilbeck sounds bigger than it is, but scales down to sweet or poignant chamber music when needed in Tom Kelly's orchestrations (he also worked on Staunton's previous megahit, Gypsy). I'll swear I heard a sax group, but there's only one. Rae Smith's sets and costumes become progressively more gilded and garish, in a good way, as the evening progresses towards an orange-flowered triple wedding. A key role is played by the ever-impressive Finn Ross's rolling video scenes, reminding us that Yonkers really was rural Hicksville in 1890, and New York looked a bit like the centres of Newcastle and Glasgow today; even when the scene stays still, the clouds roll by, and the Whistleresque nocturne of the cityscape in Act 2 is complemented by symmetrical references to the first act (the solitary rooms, the streetcar, the sudden switches of Jon Clark's expert lighting design). Cooke dissolves the boundaries of what reality there is as we move from the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant to a courtroom – Dolly still at the table, nonchalantly eating, most of the rest of the company crowded, Marx Brothers style, into a cage. The detail will repay a second, even a third visit. It looks like it might be a case of "kill for a ticket," though.

• Hello, Dolly! at the London Palladium
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk