Hello, Dolly! By Stephen Rehagen On March 20, 21, and 22, large crowds packed the Miller Center in Jefferson City to view the exciting return of Hello, Dolly! to local production. The classic Broadway musical, last performed by Helias in 1993, starred Natalie Eickhoff and Patrick Pollock as Dolly Levi and Horace Vandergelder, respectively, along with a large cast featuring a record of fifty males and nearly as many females. The show also featured more than 1,000 costumes, 30 crew members, 16 memorable songs, and one fantastic director, Wyn Riley, directing her 17th show at Helias.  The play Hello, Dolly! is set in 1890s New York, when widow Dolly Levi is hired by the wealthy Horace Vandergelder as his matchmaker. Meanwhile Vandergelder’s employees, Cornelius and Barnaby, have a night out in New York and meet two women, Irene and Minnie, with whom they immediately fall in love. Vandergelder’s niece Ermengarde desperately tries to receive her uncle’s approval to marry her boyfriend Ambrose. The play concludes with the fates of all the main characters settled in the climactic final scenes. Hello, Dolly! is filled with drama, comedy and romance. For the play to run properly, Riley needed a great crew. 30 Helias students volunteered to assist in the production of the play, with some working in the play’s sounds departments, others bringing props on and off stage, and one who pulled ropes to bring drops on the stage. The play also featured a fantastic orchestra led by Helias music director Eric Veile. Several students helped organize the many costumes while other volunteers helped apply makeup to the actors. Mr. Vossen’s theater design class created many of the drops and construction pieces used in the production. This year’s show was a hit by all accounts, with crowd pleasing acts such as “The Waiter’s Gallop,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “The Polka Contest.”  Audiences were awed by the actors’ dancing, and each actor contributed in making Hello, Dolly! one of Helias High School’s best musicals to date.