A year after the première of its production of Guys and Dolls, the Bridge Theatre invited press back to see a partly changed cast, but this was my first viewing of this immersive production in which a promenade audience fills the stage below the traffic lights and neon signs of Broadway, and multiple sections of the floor are actually lifts that magically rise up to become easily viewed stages for shopfront mission, bars, night clubs, sewers and city streets.
This is a vibrant production that dazzles with the provocative glitter of its showgirls and the precision of the dancing so perilously close to the edge of the raised stages in the exciting sweep of Arlene Phillips’s choreography.
George Ioannides and Celinde Schoenmaker continue to play gambler Sky Masterson and Salvation Army girl Sarah Brown. He makes Sky coolly confident but lacking charisma until, having whisked her off to Cuba to win a bet, he finds he is in love with her—he even tells her his real name. She is all naïve innocence until she suddenly discovers a different self after having a first taste of Cuban rum. She gives us two delightfully different drunk scenes: going wild after seeing Sky dance with a man and later, teamed up with newcomer Timmika Ramsay’s Miss Adelaide, in “Marry the Man Today”.
Newcomers to the production number about half the cast. They include Ryan Pidgen as Benny Southstreet, Jonathan Andrew Hume as Nicely-Nicely Johnson leading a show-stopping rendering of “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” and Owain Arthur as crap game mastermind Nathan Detroit.
Timmika Ramsay and Owain Arthur are a great pairing; sparks fly when they are together, he full of expressive body language, she a presence that any audience would find irresistible. If Nicholas Hytner’s production didn’t throb throughout with such energy and talent, she would take it over.
Guys and Dolls, based on the story and characters of Damon Runyon, has often been named as the greatest of Broadway musicals. It is packed with good numbers and intriguing characters that connect with the audience whether seen up close in the midst of them or from a seat overlooking the whole scene. This is a staging full of detail in both performance and staging.
It is not only the actors, who all seem to be excellent singers and nifty dancers, who are on the mark but also the crew who run the show with fantastically fine timing as they move through the audience to assemble each scene before it rises or make it dissolve away. It is good to see them feature as part of the curtain call—and that’s not the end. Audience and cast too get the change to wind down in a post-show dance. It makes a great night out.