★★★★★ Rockin’ The Boat, Magnificently
by Bob Verini
By setting that ageless example of American musical expertise, Guys & Dolls, within an immersive audience experience, director Nicholas Hytner and his colleagues at London’s Bridge Theater have infused it with a quality most of its fans have long since parted with: the element of surprise.
For this is the show we all know and love. The Abe Burrows libretto (contractually co-credited to Jo Swerling) remains smart and sassy, the Frank Loesser score a peerless melding of character and song.
Yet as one of some 200 souls asked – no, permitted! – to stand for almost three hours as a dozen or more acting platforms kept rising and falling around us, I can tell you that “Runyonland” – short-story writer Damon Runyon’s idiosyncratic take on Manhattan lowlife – has never seemed so fanciful, and yet so immediate, in the orgy of neon and glamour provided by Tony winners for The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time, Bunny Christie (sets) and Paule Constable (lighting).
Up close and personal, showgirls and grifters flirt and wheedle in a way that made me check for my wallet. A marching Mission Band hands out flyers, a gambler is like as not to lean on you as he dials a pay phone, and craps is shot so close you can almost read the pips on the dice. And all the time, stagehands dressed as cops practice gentle but firm crowd control (would that it were so benign in the real NYC). The eyes, ears, and mind are offered nonstop stimulation, because you can’t predict where the next delight will be coming from.
There are other surprises in store. Charlie Rosen’s lusher-than-usual orchestrations, under Tom Brady’s supervision, summon up showbiz pizzazz for the audacious, athletic choreography of Arlene Phillips with James Cousins. The Hot Box Girls have never been so hot, with Christie and Deborah Andrews’s costumes delighting in sexiness rather than pure period style.
But it all comes down to the guys & the dolls, spectacular in (once again) unexpected ways. Far from the usual mournful kvetcher, Daniel Mays plays Nathan Detroit like a tireless vaudeville comic at the wrong end of a shooting gallery: always in motion, gamely fighting off every disaster. Marisha Wallace might be channeling Nell Carter in Ain’t Misbehavin’ for a Miss Adelaide sultry enough to raise your pulse but honest enough to break your heart. Andrew Richardson’s startling resemblance to noir character actor Steve Cochran adds a welcome touch of gravity to his charming Sky Masterson. Meanwhile, fetching Charlotte Scott (on for the usual Miss Sarah at the performance I attended) goes toe to toe with Richardson in a performance of steely grace that melts, after a couple of rum punches, into romance in bloom. By the end, there’s no doubt these lovers are meant for each other.
One cannot leave out Cameron Johnson’s Big Jule and his gravelly vocal menace up from the bottom of the ocean, or Anthony O’Donnell’s huggable grandpa Arvide, or the indefatigable Cedric Neal’s Nicely-Nicely Johnson leading the company in an eleventh-hour “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” with a gospel quality you’ve never seen before.
You don’t have to be a groundling. There are plenty of traditional seats. Which is pretty much the only traditional element in this glorious revival.
★★★★★ The Great Musical in an Absolutely Great Revival
by David Finkle
There are revivals and there are REVIVALS. The revival of the classic Jo Swerling-Abe Burrows-Frank Loesser Guys & Dolls (1950) at London’s Bridge Theatre is a REVIVAL. It may be its like it has never been seen. What the theater’s co-founder and most frequent director Nicholas Hytner and choreographers Arlene Phillips and James Cousins have accomplished is an ingenious and enviable example of enhancing a classic musical comedy while being true to every line and lyric in it.
They, along with a to-die-for flank of creators, have constructed an immersive-theater experience (with plenty of seats for immersive-avoiding theatergoers) that has the immersives transformed into the hordes populating Broadway’s fabulous streets. That’s where, of course, Damon Runyon’s characters, on whom Swerling and Burrows based their book, congregate in hopes of striking it big in one way or another.
Hytner had set designer Bunny Christie (also costume designer with Deborah Andrews) establish a series of interlocking platforms that rise and lower to arrange and rearrange what seem like innumerable areas for the actors to do whatever they’re ingeniously doing while delivering the never-fail Swerling-Burrows dialogue and the magnificently-Runyonesque Loesser songs.
Described on the program as “a magical fable of Broadway,” the guys and dolls enlivening the fable are led by high-roller Guy Masterson (Andrew Richardson), who makes a thousand-dollar bet with craps-game schemer Nathan Detroit (Daniel Mays) that he won’t be able to lure serious Salvation Army soldier Sarah Brown (Celinde Schoenmaker) into a one-night Cuban idyll. Meanwhile, Nathan is dodging marriage-struck Miss Adelaide (Marisha Wallace) to whom he’s been engaged for 14 years and wouldn’t mind another 14.
As those platforms do their enthralling ups and downs and Christie lowers neon signs saying “Mindy’s,” (representing famous B’way eatery Lindy’s), Sky and Nathan unleash their shenanigans. Meanwhile, Sarah resists Guy’s attentions until she no longer can, and Miss Adelaide hounds Nathan, only stopping to perform as the main Hot Box singing/stripping attraction.
But what makes this two-act ode to musical comedy joy so over-the-top, so historically memorable? Granted, musicals have been performed in the round before, platforms have levitated and dropped before. Not, though, with Hytner’s sense of unbridled excitement, not with such imaginative flourishes and embellishments.
For instance, just before the intermission looks to be finishing, Hytner sends out a male quartet to reprise some of Loesser’s first act songs (that quickly became standards—“I’ll Know,” “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” “If I Were a Bell.”) They’re followed by a tap dancer, providing further skilled, unexpected entertainment.
Among the many second-act songs from Loesser’s not-a-dud-in-them score, there’s “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” led by Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Cedric Neal). It’s impossible to say Phillips and Cousins have staged the best musical number ever, but it’s certainly fair to suggest that this one instantly leaps into the Top 10.
Alongside missionaries, the reluctantly penitent gamblers participating in this spectacular showstopper are on a squared platform area representing Sarah’s mission. Throughout the singing, they stand and sit down in constantly shifting patterns, which only shift more intricately during two or three audience-demanded reprises. Audience jubilation ensues.
Note that this reviewer was merrily exposed to Guys & Dolls in the (once?) traditional way: seated. So, there’ll be no comment on the experience those immersed have as they’re moved about by actors (or are they security men?) in policemen’s uniforms. They definitely do appear to be having a superfine time. They also get to join cast members who remain after final bows to dance while the Guys & Dolls band plays on and others in a bigger hurry exit, themselves unquestionably singing, humming and/or whistling Loesser.
Guys and Dolls opened February 18, 2020 at the Bridge Theatre (London) and runs through February 24, 2024. Tickets and information: bridgetheatre.co.uk