GUYS AND DOLLS - 9th to 13th March 2010

Guys and Dolls is an absolute treasure of a musical, packed full of richly cynical characters and deliciously memorable tunes.Irving Stage Company brought it to glorious technicolour life, with Damon Runyon’s New York sinners sporting lurid zoot suits in vivid shades of scarlet, turquoise and tangerine.The plot is a parody of the classic ‘boy meets girl’ romance.Gambler Nathan Detroit meets a nightclub singer, strings her along for fourteen years and is finally shamed into marrying her, very much against his will.In a parallel romance, bad boy Sky Masterson meets a saintly girl, sweeps her off her feet, then is seduced in his turn into a life of piety and preaching.In this world, marriage is a trap laid by women to catch men, and the women are determined to mould the untamed male into a domestic pussycat.Marc Kerr and Christopher Longman displayed energy, charm and talent as the two gamblers. Longman coped exceptionally well with demanding songs, famously performed by Frank Sinatra.Lyndsey Allsopp as Salvation Army Sgt Sarah Brown and Lynn Nunn as Miss Adelaide were puritan chalk and decadent cheese. Both women made the most of their comic opportunities. Allsopp was brilliantly convincing in an excursion into tipsy salaciousness with If I Were a Bell.The nightclub scene in Havana was enlivened with some superb Latino dance routines. The influence of director/choreographer Siân Couture was very much in evidence throughout, and the large chorus did her proud. Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat, especially, was rousing and effective. The nightclub cabaret routines had just the right mix of prurience and modesty.The only niggle was the complex set, which was slow to change, even with a small army of stage crew. Scene changes did hold up the action, but this was a wonderfully entertaining evening which swept the audience up on a tidal wave of melody and merriment.

Gayle Wade
March 2010

CAST LIST