Director Michael Moore says he pitched Hello, Dolly! to Queanbeyan Players as a return to the golden age of musicals because "there's not much of it going around".

In recent years, he says, local musical theatre companies have been producing "a lot of modern stuff, a lot of deep and meaningful stuff.

"Hello, Dolly! is a return to fun, the golden age of musicals.

"Nobody dies, there's no rape, murder or pathology."

He says Hello, Dolly! - which is having its first Canberra production since 2005 - is "a show about love: there all kinds of couples falling in love in various ways" and adds, "It's a return to fun, to the golden age of musicals".

The title song was a huge hit for Louis Armstrong in 1964 and reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It ended the Beatles' winning streak of three number-one hits in a row: they had topped the charts for 14 consecutive weeks.

Armstrong, 62, also became the oldest artist to top the US charts. He won a Grammy Award for best male vocal performance and the song itself won for song of the year.

In the lyrics of Hello, Dolly!, the names Dolly mentions had personal significance for Herman: Harry was his father and Manny and Louis were uncles.

Hello, Dolly! is based on the 1939 play The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, itself based on an 1842 Austrian play derived from a British play from seven years earlier.

The musical is set in New York City in the 1890s.

Since she was widowed 10 years ago, Dolly Gallagher Levi (played by Janelle McMenamin) has turned her hand to various kinds of work to get by, including dance instruction and mandolin lessons.

Dolly is also a matchmaker, and is seeking a wife for the curmudgeonly "half a millionaire" Horace Vandergelder (Tony Falla), a Yonkers hay and feed merchant.

Horace's niece Ermengarde (Madeline Calder) loves Ambrose (Aaron Sims) but her uncle is opposed to them marrying because Ambrose is an artist with no steady income - so the young lovers also seek Dolly's help.

Dolly introduces Horace to New York hatmaker Irene Molloy (Demi Smith) and her assistant Minnie Fay (Emily Pogson).

But the matchmaker secretly wants to marry Horace herself - not just to provide herself with security but to help others: as she says, "Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow."

While the irascible Horace might seem misogynistic by today's standards, Moore doesn't want to "mess with the period" and says "[I]t was forgivable in 1897".

And a lot of how he comes across is in the performance, bringing out hints of a softer side that Dolly can be attracted to and work to bring out more, Moore says.

Meanwhile, Horace's employees, Cornelius Hackl (Will Collett) and Barnaby Tucker (Max Macmillan) are left in charge of his store. Since the boss is away, they decide to close up shop and head to New York.

Macmillan, aged 19 like his character, describes Barnaby as "the idiot apprentice ... he goes along with what anyone asks him to do."

So he is easily led by the older chief clerk Cornelius into taking the day off.

Despite being older, Cornelius has his own naivete when it comes to the world: he has never kissed a girl and that's on his list.

All of the characters have adventures, romantic and otherwise, and by the end all their lives will be changed for the better - just like many a traditional music comedy.