Kate Baldwin, Santino Fontana, J. Harrison Ghee and More to Star in HELLO, DOLLY! at Carnegie Hall

Hello, Dolly!, featuring an all-star cast of Tony Award winners and nominees, will be the eleventh presentation in Transport Group's Anne L. Bernstein Concert Series—for one night only—on Monday, June 23, at 8:00 p.m. at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall. Hello, Dolly! will be directed by Transport Group Artistic Director and five-time Drama Desk Award nominee and two-time Obie Award winner Jack Cummings III with musical direction by Joey Chancey. Hannah Oren serves as creative producer and Merri Sugarman, CSA serves as casting director. The evening is the creative team’s return to Carnegie Hall after last summer’s sold-out benefit performance of Follies In Concert.

Hello, Dolly!, book by Michael Stewart, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, based on the play The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, original production directed and choreographed by Gower Champion, produced for the Broadway stage by David Merrick and Champion Five, Inc., premiered on Broadway on January 16, 1964 at the St. James Theatre, and would make a bona fide Broadway star of its leading lady Carol Channing. The winner of ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical (a record at the time) as well as the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical, would go on to break the record as the longest-running Broadway musical and would be revived on Broadway four times. Numerous notable actresses would take on the role of Dolly Gallagher-Levi including Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller, and Ethel Merman, during its initial record-breaking run, as well as Mary Martin, Carole Cook, Dorothy Lamour, Eve Arden, Ann Miller, Michele Lee, Edie Adams, and Yvonne De Carlo on tour, as well as countless others in foreign and regional productions. Bette Midler starred in an acclaimed Tony-winning Broadway revival in 2017, and Pearl Bailey headed a Broadway revival in 1975. Channing herself would play the role more than 5,000 times, both on Broadway in three separate productions as well as in national and international tours.

Transport Group’s concert includes Kate Baldwin (two-time Tony nominee, Hello, Dolly!, Finian’s Rainbow), Nikki Renée Daniels (Once Upon a Mattress, Company), Hannah Elless (Bright Star, Benny & Joon), Andrew Barth Feldman (Dear Evan Hansen, No Hard Feelings), Katie Finneran (two-time Tony winner, Promises, Promises, Noises Off), Jessica Fontana (Cinderella, TG’s Once Upon a Mattress), Santino Fontana (Tony winner, Tootsie, Cinderella), J. Harrison Ghee (Tony winner, Some Like it Hot, Kinky Boots), Ann Harada (Schmigadoon, Avenue Q), Erika Henningsen (Just In Time, Mean Girls), Grey Henson (Tony nominee, Mean Girls, Elf), Ashley D. Kelley (Lucille Lortel nominee, Shucked, Bella: An American Tale), Beth Leavel (Tony winner, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Prom), Kecia Lewis (Tony winner, Hell’s Kitchen, Once On This Island), Marilyn Maye (Grammy nominee, Meet Marvelous Marilyn Maye), Jak Malone (Tony nominee, Operation Mincemeat), Zachary Noah Piser (Drama Desk nominee, Redwood, KPOP), Thom Sesma (Drama Desk nominee, Dead Outlaw, Pacific Overtures), Helen J. Shen (Drama Desk nominee, Maybe Happy Ending, Teeth), A.J. Shively (Tony nominee, Paradise Square, La Cage aux Folles), Christopher Sieber (two-time Tony nominee, Death Becomes Her, Spamalot), Roger Preston Smith (Hello, Dolly!, Peter Pan), Ephraim Sykes (Tony nominee, Ain’t Too Proud, Our Town), Barbara Walsh (Tony nominee, Falsettos, Company), NaTasha Yvette Williams (Tony nominee, Some Like It Hot, Waitress), Samantha Williams (Pirates! The Penzance Musical, Caroline, or Change), Alysha Umphress (On the Town, American Idiot), Jessica Vosk (Hell’s Kitchen, Wicked), and Anna Zavelson (The Notebook, Encores’ The Light in the Piazza). The evening will be hosted by Tony nominee Lee Roy Reams.

The evening will feature a selection of Gower Champion’s original choreography restaged by choreographer and 1995 Broadway revival Hello, Dolly! cast member Randy Slovacek, as well as a 30-piece orchestra.

Hello, Dolly! includes the classic songs “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” “Before the Parade Passes By,” “It Only Takes a Moment,” and, of course, the title song, which was a Billboard #1 hit for Louis Armstrong and earned the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. Both Armstrong’s album, Hello, Dolly!, and the original Broadway cast recording hit #1 on the Billboard album chart—and both Armstrong’s recording of the song and the original Broadway cast recording would be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

This unique concert series features a different lineup of performers for each song, rather than a role portrayed by one actor for the entire evening. Additionally, in lieu of the musical’s book scenes, backstage stories and anecdotes from the creation of the original production are woven between songs.