With a cast of 47 actors, many of whom have jobs and other commitments, getting everyone together at one time was sometimes a challenge.

So was directing the on-stage traffic in the massed ensemble numbers.

"It's like herding cats," Mr Moore said.

But after weeks of rehearsal, construction, and costume-making, Moore was confident the production, from the Queanbeyan Players, was ready for its opening on Friday night.

The 1964 musical with songs by Jerry Herman - including Before the Parade Passes By and It Takes A Woman - was based on the 1955 play The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder.

Its title song was a huge hit for jazz artist Louis Armstrong.

Set in New York City, it tells the story of widowed Dorothy Gallagher Levi (played by Janelle McMenamin) whose various ways of getting by include being a matchmaker.

She is engaged by the wealthy, grumpy Yonkers feed merchant Horace Vandergelder (Tony Falla) to find him a wife. But she has her eye on him herself.

Soon caught up in Dolly's schemes are Horace's employees Cornelius (Will Collett) and Barnaby (Max Macmillan), hatmaker Irene Molloy (Demi Smith) and her assistant Minnie Fay (Emily Pogson).

Young Ermangarde (Madeline Calder) and her artist boyfriend Ambrose (Aaron Sims) have also sought Dolly's help as Horace is Ermangarde's uncle and does not approve of them getting married since Ambrose has no steady income.

This was, Moore said, the first time the musical had been produced in the Canberra area since the Canberra Philharmonic Society's production more than 10 years ago, in 2005.

Moore described the show as "a rom-com with four romances".

While Wilder called his original play "an adventure", in Hello, Dolly! "the adventure is falling in love", he said.