Ask any passionate musical theater fan to name the “perfect” musical, and you’ll likely get one of three answers: Gypsy, My Fair Lady, and Guys and Dolls. Sure, you could make an argument for Sweeney Todd, A Chorus Line, Oklahoma!, or insert-your-favorite-here. But Gypsy, My Fair Lady, and Guys and Dolls—in no particular order—inevitably emerge as the top 3.
Count me squarely in the Guys and Dolls camp. If there’s a flaw to be found in the 1950 “musical fable of Broadway,” based on characters created by journalist/short story writer Damon Runyon, it’s not in Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows’ drum-tight book. And it’s certainly not in Frank Loesser’s honey of a score. Plus, the show is pretty much indestructible: Even a high school drama department with the skimpiest of budgets can do Guys and Dolls justice. All you need is a bunch of fedoras for the crapshooters, a few feather boas for the Hot Box Girls, and a willingness to experiment with a Noo Yawk accent. (Gypsy, magnificent as it may be, is not exactly high school fare. College is probably a better place for the story of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and her single-minded stage mom.)
So no one had to twist my arm to get me to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., for its Broadway Center Stage production of Guys and Dolls, which just kicked off its regrettably short (and reportedly sold-out) run. Oh, a show with an actual overture! Plus 21—count ’em, 21!—musicians, plus musical director Kevin Stites, on stage. Yes, they’re using the now-iconic Michael Starobin orchestrations from the 1992 Tony-winning Jerry Zaks revival.
The adulation for this Guys and Dolls begins almost immediately, with the opening number, “Fugue for Tinhorns,” where the pin-striped, plaid-suited gamblers Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Kevin Chamberlin), Benny Southstreet (Matthew Saldivar), and Rusty Charlie (Akron Watson) harmonize on a lively ode to, of all things, a horserace. And we haven’t even met the two couples at the center of the show’s happy-ending-guaranteed love stories: “good old reliable Nathan,” aka inveterate gambler and infamous commitment-phobe Nathan Detroit (Aladdin Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart); his permanently congested perma-fiancée, Miss Adelaide (Jessie Mueller, Beautiful’s Tony-winning Carole King); uppity Save a Soul missionary Sarah Brown (Phillipa Soo, Hamilton’s original Eliza Schuyler); and the man determined to melt her ice-filled heart, smooth-talking high roller Sky Masterson (Steven Pasquale, most recently seen as John Wilkes Booth in last season’s Assassins, who happens to be Soo’s real-life husband).
Director Marc Bruni—who helmed Kennedy Center productions of the Loesser musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (starring Skylar Astin, Betsy Wolfe, and Michael Urie) and The Music Man (with Mueller and Norm Lewis)—knows that theatergoers are craving a candy-colored musical comedy, and he delivers. Everything, from Paul Tate dePoo III’s spot-on scenic and projection design—think artful re-creations of the era’s Times Square advertisements for Mr. Peanut, Canadian Club, and TWA—to Denis Jones’ impressively acrobatic choreography (particularly the loose-limbed salsa stylings in “Havana”), is light and bright and bursting with joy.
Though she’s typically associated with more serious roles, Mueller is a complete delight—and a little Mae West–esque—playing the bleached-blonde Hot Box headliner Miss Adelaide, as beautiful and bawdy and believable in the sniffle- and sneeze-filled “Adelaide’s Lament” as she is in the hip-swiveling striptease “Take Back Your Mink.” Soo finds every bit of humor in Sarah, who, let’s face it, often comes off as a major stick in the mud. And then there’s Pasquale, oozing charisma from the moment he steps onstage in a perfectly tailored three-piece suit and jauntily cocked fedora (Mara Blumenfeld designed the costumes, as vibrant as the streets of New York City themselves): Pasquale was pretty much born to play the silver-tongued Sky; his “Luck Be A Lady” is a spine-tingler from start to finish. The one small disappointment is Iglehart. Perhaps he’s still settling into the role, or perhaps he’s worried about mimicking Nathan Lane’s memorable performance in the 1992 revival. But anyone who saw Iglehart’s up-to-11 turn as the Genie in Aladdin knows that he’s a comic dynamo, and he’s underplaying—and underwhelming—as the lovable ham Nathan Detroit.
Yet that’s a forgivable (and easily fixable) flaw in an otherwise buoyant, eternally optimistic production. Even a brief mid-scene technical stop on opening night couldn’t dampen this show’s formidable spirit. Don’t be surprised if the standing ovation comes early—specifically after the second-act roof-raiser, Nicely-Nicely’s high-spirited “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” a raucous, gospel-tinged tune that’s been covered by everyone from the Glee cast to Jennifer Nettles. As Nicely-Nicely tells us: “Beware, you’re on a heavenly trip.” Indeed we are.
Guys and Dolls opened Oct. 9, 2022, at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater and runs through Oct. 16. Tickets and information: kennedy-center.org
