This Show Can Do!
Riverside Theater presents Guys and Dolls
By Dennis Wemm
THEATRE CRITIC
Guys and Dolls: A Musical Fable of Broadway
Riverside Center for the Performing Arts, Directed by Patrick A’Hearn
Story and Characters: Damon Runyon
Music and Lyrics: Frank Loesser
Book: Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
Tickets - $72.00 (Tickets available through June 28th)
Let there be no doubt about it, this “fable” has everything you could look for in a traditional musical comedy. A funny and moving script and colorful characters? It’s here. Singable songs, performed with skill and panache? Yes. Farcical action that just doesn’t stop? Yep. Energetic, inventive, and skilled dance numbers? Yep. Does it establish a visual and performance style that builds its own little world where all this stuff can happen that is fun, coherent, and follows its own rules to a T? It’s in there. Get yourselves there and give yourselves a good time; you deserve it.
Okay, that’s the basics of this review.
This play is a story about love among the tinhorns in mid-century mid-town Manhattan. What year is it? The stories by Damon Runyon featuring these characters were written in the thirties and the play was performed in the fifties. So pick yourself a decade when the dresses were classic and the lapels and neckties were way so wide. That’ll do. The characters and action don’t care. They’re in their own little world of tinhorns, dames, grifters, sleazy bars, and speakeasies. Everyone is in a game of their own and everyone else casually plays along.
Integrated musicals like this usually focus on romances between a couple who are serious and a couple who are there for the laughs. Sarah and Sky are our romantic leads who hold love at arm’s length while enjoying each other’s company. She’s an urban missionary out to convert Broadway, he’s a high stakes gambler for whom no stakes are high enough and has no compunctions about how he scores his big wins. As they connect, Sky begins to care against his will and Sarah begins to enjoy life (and him). That’s the “good” side of this little world. It’s a romantic comedy, though, so they’re going to have to deal with pain and reconciliation before the end.
Nathan and Adelaide are less so. Each needs and loves the other desperately but for their own reasons. Their “push me, pull you” relationship is reaching its limits after fourteen years, though. Their surrender is only a matter of time. You can tell the difference between the two couple’s status by “how classy they tawk.”
The backdrop of these two relationships centers on a “permanent floating craps game” that Nathan runs. It’s constantly in search of a new location because of police raids. Nathan is pushed to a crisis because Lt. Brannigan of the NYPD vice squad is getting smarter about guessing Nathan’s likely new sites but Nathan is trapped into never letting the game die. Then a high roller from Chicago (Big Jule) shows up armed, surrounded by muscle, and holding a huge wad of cash that Nathan can’t resist. After that you’ll have to watch the show to find out.
The play is an alchemical compound of Oklahoma! (integrated production elements); Anything Goes (star vehicle with an urban gloss); and The Bowery Boys, with a touch of Three Stooges. It simply works, and that is a tribute to a highly professional cast and a real commitment to production and staging. The actors take the stage with the opening number “Runyonland,” which flows effortlessly into “Fugue for Tinhorns” which establishes a can-do energy, which never lets up until the final curtain.
Design elements all join together and allow the location to switch from Times Square to Havana, Cuba to a sewer (yeah, a sewer). The set is a highly flexible open staging that allows it to believably accommodate the shifts in location, painted and dyed in deep wood tone, and a scrim with a sepia rendition of midtown Manhattan.
The Ensemble
The sound is simply gorgeous. The orchestra joins the cast onstage behind a scrim. Vocal balance with the instruments is, well…pitch perfect. Which means that the singers are truly energized.
Even though there are moments where there are dance breaks, they never end up looking like an adornment for instrumentals. Each one tells a story, even up to the extended male dance sequence in the second act, which leads to the iconic song “Luck be a Lady.” It’s an athletic romp in which the act of throwing dice across the floor turns into a signature character move for each dancer. Miss Adelaide and the women’s chorus mostly have music-hall style numbers that are fun, boisterous, and sexy in a cute way. Kudos to Stephanie Wood on the choreographer, in addition to her Assistant Director credit.
The kudos continue because the entire performance “speaks with one voice.” In a play production, the decisions are endless and closely intertwined. One choice leads to another and the consequences of making a less-than-unified decision immediately stand out to the observer. With Guys and Dolls the choices are clear, motivated and driven by the needs of the script and score. And the moment “sticks the landing” like a champion gymnast. In this production everything is just the way it should be.
The main characters; Sky (Dan Klimko) and Sarah (Sarah Mae Andersen); Nathan (Ian Federgreen) and Adelaide (Kiley Ernest), are well-written and well-interpreted by the performers. Each belongs to a different milieu, and each is played to the hilt. That consistency in lesser work could fall apart but here it makes them all believable.
Sky and Sarah are the more complex couple, we see them struggle toward each other and toward love. Each is stuck on a mission-literally, in Sarah’s case- which makes it impossible to believe that they could start listening to each other. When they fall in love, they both seem surprised. When they have to sacrifice for each other, their chemistry comes to the surface. When it does, it makes most media romcoms seem annoyingly lazy.
Nathan has been stringing Adelaide along as a fiancé for fourteen years. She longs for a family which causes her to have a psychosomatic cold. She casually drops that term in a monologue which is startlingly self-aware so easily that even though she says it in a delightfully cheesy east coast urban dialect it sounds natural. You realize that she doesn’t stop for anyone and Nathan is a sitting duck.
Every romcom has to have a reconciliation scene where love is tested and comes back again, but Sarah and Adelaide’s reconciliations are refreshingly realistic, well-played, and save the show from Hallmark network sappiness.
The supporting cast is equally skilled, filling the stage with the interesting, fully fledged tough guys and dolls characters, more familiar from period gangster comedies. Each performer is worth watching, each knows when to take the stage and when to blend into the ensemble. And just when you’re sure you’ve seen everything they can do, some individual will have a moment that simply pops the entire sequence to a whole new level of character energy or performance style. It’s like watching a three ring circus when all performers are stars in their own right and throw the focus to the next act selflessly. An effortlessly impressive ensemble.
Costuming is period and appropriate to the action and each character (this includes hair treatments and personal makeup, which are impeccable). Just when you get into the gritty big shouldered look, though, the action hilariously jets you down to Havana. Sky and Sarah throw off the various uniforms of their various trades and the entire stage becomes casual; they go back to NYC, and take them up again. The crap game sequence is just as jarring and just as appropriate.
Lighting is timed right and manages to hang together as a design, even with such wildly varied locations, times of day, and performance styles.
This production is notable for all elements being excellently planned and executed, and simply because it delivers a powerhouse evening of fun, surprises, laughs, and good honest emotion. If you don’t see it you’re missing a sure bet.
Dennis Wemm is a retired professor of theatre and communication, having taught and led both departments at Glenville State College for 34 years. In his off time, he was president and sometimes Executive Director of the West Virginia Theatre Conference, secretary and president of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and generally enjoyed a life in theatre.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
