The Matchmaker
By Thornton Wilder
Directed by Yaga Brady
Nov. 27,28,29(sold out)
Dec 3,4,5,6,10,11,12,13
NOTE:  11/29 Performance is SOLD OUT

As our second offering this season we proudly bring to you Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, a joyous, sprawling, and rollicking farce, one of the most enduring and endearing classics of the American stage. The Matchmaker marks the 500^th production at The Stagecrafters.

Set in Yonkers and New York City near the end of the nineteenth century, the action takes place in the course of a single day . . . and what action it is! Love makes the world go ‘round, but a little money will grease the wheels – so proclaims canny marriage broker, Dolly Gallagher Levi. Engaged by rich, wife-seeking widower Horace Vandergelder, she artfully conspires to snag the man for herself and, in so doing, sets off a whirlwind of assorted missteps, mishaps, mistaken identities, and romantic entanglements that befall a dozen-or-so inter-related characters, each in their way primed to experience something new and invigorating in their lives.

★ Witty • Fun-filled • Charming ★

Wilder (1897-1975), who graduated from Yale University in 1920, established himself as a pre-eminent American dramatist with Our Town (1938), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. His Matchmaker has a long and colorful ancestry, starting with the one-act farce, A Day Well Spent, written by the Englishman, John Oxenford, in 1835, and expanded to a full-length play by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy, in 1842. Adapted by Wilder in 1938 as The Merchant of Yonkers, then reworked and rechristened as The Matchmaker in 1953, it opened on Broadway on December 5, 1955 for a run of close to two years. Ruth Gordon portrayed Dolly Levi under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie, who garnered the Tony award for Best Director. Wilder also scripted the play’s 1964 musical version on Broadway, Hello, Dolly!. The play has charmed audiences in countless revivals for over a half-century. In fact, it was presented at our theater thirty-one seasons ago, in June of 1978.