Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, book by Jo Swerling & Abe Burrows, directed by Tadeusz Bradecki
Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 11-November 3, 2013
“A Sure Winner”
The Shaw Festival’s first production of the classic American musical Guys and Dolls is strong, solid and recommendable even to people who have seen the piece many times before. Here finally is a production that does Frank Loesser’s music justice. This is the first production I’ve seen where all of principals can sing. One might take such a requirement for granted, but it seldom occurs, as demonstrated in the 1955 movie version with non-singers like Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons in major roles. When it is both sung and acted with panache as here, Guys and Dolls is a show that’s sure to please.
Though based on the stories of Damon Runyon (1880-1946), who celebrated the low-life denizens of Broadway and midtown Manhattan, the book for Guys and Dolls by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows follows the typical structure of Viennese operetta that parallels the romance of a serious couple with that of a comic couple. Here the “serious” couple is the notorious gambler Sky Masterson (Kyle Blair), who is bet $1000 that he won’t be able to take the Salvation Army sergeant Sarah Brown (Elodie Gillett) on a date to Havana. In pursuing Sarah purely to win the bet, Sky falls in love with her and she with him. Paralleling their story is the comic tale of 14-year-long engagement between Nathan Detroit (Shawn Wright), a well-known arranger of floating craps games, and Miss Adelaide (Jenny L. Wright), the bubbly dancer at the Hot Box nightclub.
Shawn Wright is excellent as Nathan Detroit and a perfect partner for Jenny Wright’s Adelaide. He’s just as dim as she is but also just as essentially good. He may run New York’s biggest floating craps game but that’s just his job rather than a moral judgement on him. Wright may use the nasal Noo Yawk accent of all the lowlifes in the show, but his singing voice is full and rich.
As the “serious” couple Kyle Blair as Sky Masterson and Elodie Gillett as Sarah Brown make an ideal contrast to Shawn Wright and Jenny L. Wright. Blair does not use the Noo Yawk accent but speaks in cool, measured tones, regards everyone from a stance of natural superiority and moves with pantherine grace. He sings his famous songs like “Luck Be a Lady” with power and bite. For her part, Gillett is well-cast as a wide-eyed idealist who doesn’t question her puritanical morals or the importance of “saving” souls. Her operetta-like voice is well-suited to her songs like “If I Were a Bell”. The humour of this “serious” couple is that falling in love knocks each of them off the pedestal they’ve placed themselves on. The two are well-match in such lovely duets as “I’ll Know” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”.
It’s luxury casting to have Thom Allison as Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Not only does he have a great talent for comedy but he is a fine singer. He captures the ebullient mood of the whole show in his performance of the title tune, and his rendition of the famous song “Sit Down, Your Rockin’ the Boat” is more nuanced than any I’ve ever heard. Allison shows us how Nicely is making up his confession of a guilty dream as he goes along only to get caught up in it by the end. It’s a treat to see a standard showstopper given such a fresh, insightful performance.
In smaller roles, Peter Millard is a welcome presence as Sarah’s grandfather and his performance of the song “More I Cannot Wish You” is perhaps the most moving in the show. Patty Jamieson is suitably stern as the Salvation Army General Matilda B. Cartwright and Guy Bannerman comically tough as police Lieutenant Brannigan. Billy Lake provides good support to Thom Allison as Benny Southstreet and Aadin Church supplies just the right air of danger as the arch-gambler Big Jule.
The show begins with a blown-up black-and-white photo of Broadway circa 1950 which rises to reveal Peter Hartwell’s black-and-white set cleverly composed of hidden set pieces that move in to represent the various interiors. Sue LePage has designed deliberately colourfully garish outfits for the gamblers and the showgirls, saving truly stylish ensembles for Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown.
The show’s main flaw is the lacklustre choreography of Parker Esse. The “Runyonland” opening scene is not as inventive as others I’ve seen, and his nightclub scene in Havana pales in comparison with Kelly Robinson’s for Stratford in 2004 or Brian MacDonald’s there in 1990. Wild dancing is supposed to give way to a barroom brawl, but Esse starts the brawl too late in the sequence to have the proper effect. Also, no one seems to have informed him of what a great dancer Kyle Blair is. After his fantastic work in 42nd Street at Stratford last year, it’s strange to see him sitting down doing nothing all the while Elodie Gillett is gyrating away as the drunken Sarah Brown. Other choreographers might have used a dance between Sky and Sarah to show how what was once a simply a bet has turned into much more for Sky. The one sequence Esse does master is the “Crapshooter’s Dance” which finally matches the show’s exuberance.
One reason that the Shaw Festival’s Guys and Dolls seems to have more substance than previous productions is the fact that director Tadeusz Bradecki and conductor Paul Sportelli worked together on the Shaw’s previous production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Happy End in 2003 (revived in 2005). Happy End from 1926, also about gamblers and the Salvation Army, with a romance between the leaders of both local groups, is known to be an influence on Loesser’s musical. Bradecki brings out the parallelism of capitalism with gangsterism that stems from Brecht while Sportelli brings out the satirical as well as the formal classical elements of Weill’s music. Sportelli has a 16-member band under is command which thus gives him the means to bring out the detail in Loesser’s score.
The superlative cast under Bradecki’s insightful dramatic supervision and Sportelli’s equally insightful musical supervision makes the Shaw Festival’s Guys and Dolls one of the most joyfully invigorating musical’s the Festival has ever presented. It’s a guaranteed winner you won’t want to pass up.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Thom Allsion (centre) with the cast of Guys and Dolls; (middle) Shawn Wright and Jenny L. Wright. ©2013 David Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.
2013-07-28
Guys and Dolls