The Matchmaker
The Matchmaker is a play by Thornton Wilder. Set in 1884, the story focuses on Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who supports herself by a variety of means, with matchmaking as her primary source of income. Horace Vandergelder, a wealthy but miserly merchant from Yonkers, New York, has hired her to find him a wife, but unbeknownst to him Dolly is determined to fill the position herself. When he expresses his intent to travel to New York City to woo milliner Irene Molloy, Dolly shows him the photograph of a woman she calls Miss Ernestina Simple and tells him the buxom beauty would be a far better choice for him. Horace agrees to have dinner with Ernestina at the Harmonia Gardens after visiting Irene.

Meanwhile, Horace's clerk head Cornelius Hackl convinces his sidekick Barnaby Tucker that they, too, deserve an outing to New York. The two cause cans of tomatoes to explode, spewing their contents about the store, which justifies their closing it for the day and heading to the city.