Not quite Runyon, but then what, apart from Runyon, is?
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
"Of all the high players that this country ever sees, there is no doubt but that the guy they call The Sky is the highest. In fact, the reason he is called The Sky is because he goes so high when it comes to betting on any proposition whatever. He will bet all he has, and no one can bet any more than this."
Thus reads the opening paragraph of Damon Runyon's short story 'The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown', on which the classic musical Guys and Dolls is loosely based. From it you will have gathered, if you did not already know, that the plot revolves around gambling. The action is set in the fringe world of New York's gambling community in the depression years of the 1930s, among the 'guys' who scrape by from playing the horses by day and crap-games by night, and the 'dolls' who share this shady milieu with them. As Runyon wrote of one of his characters: "what he does for a living is the best he can, which is an occupation greatly overcrowded at all times on Broadway".
The characters for Guys and Dolls are drawn not just from 'The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown' but from numerous other Runyon stories. Prominent among them are Nathan Detroit, who runs the hottest floating crap game in town - 'floating' in the sense that it is constantly relocated to stay ahead of the police - and his ever-loving fiancée Miss Adelaide, who sings and dances in a nightclub, a typical profession for a Runyon doll. Equally typically, though, it is her dearest wish that Nathan should quit the gambling business and become a steady, suburban husband.
Also weighing in on the side of respectability is the Salvation Army style Save-a-Soul mission, the Broadway outpost of which is run by the scrumptious but strait-laced Sergeant Sarah Brown. The mutual attraction and resultant tension between her and the sinner Sky provides one of the mainsprings of the plot, the other being the evolving relationship between Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide. Bets of an increasing ludicrous nature - for example, as to whether Sky will be able to lure Sarah off to Cuba (in those pre-Castro days a notorious den of iniquity), or for souls against money - are the levers by which the action is moved forward.
Ludicrous? Yes, but that's all part of the fun; you wouldn't want to take it too seriously, and Guys and Dolls gives you plenty to enjoy without doing so. The dialogue is sharp and witty, and some foot-tapping song-and-dance numbers lend it a pace and punch that, in a good production, keep the audience engaged whole-heartedly throughout, irrespective of credibility.
However, it is important that the action isn't allowed to flag or the audience to reflect too deeply. For this reason, Guys and Dolls is much better suited to the immediacy and audience-involving nature of the live stage than to the screen. The movie version made in 1955 (with Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Jean Simmons) was to my mind a disappointment, and I am not surprised that no subsequent attempt has been made to film it.
By contrast, any new stage production of Guys and Dolls is to be welcomed, whether it's the one currently playing in Dover with Ciao's own Justine, or the Donmar production now on at the Piccadilly Theatre featuring Ewan McGregor. The latter is the one I am reviewing here.
It is an excellent production. Director Michael Grandage takes all the tricks that matter, keeping the action zinging along with verve and visual humour. The sets are cleverly designed and brilliantly lit, continually giving the eye something new on which to focus while maintaining the essential atmosphere. The choreography works well: stylish, energetic and utterly in keeping. And the cast all contribute strong performances.
Having attained Hollywood stardom, Ewan McGregor is to be praised for finding time to spend a season back in the London West End. He makes a rather clean-cut and wholesome Sky, perhaps lacking some of the authentic Runyonesque grittiness, but has a strong stage presence that keeps him the focus of attention. His New York accent holds up well and, though I'm not sure that his singing voice is quite strong enough for a musical lead, he is overall a success in the role.
Jenna Russell as Sarah Brown shows great versatility. At the outset she looks the part - all primness and disapproval - to such an extent that one wonders how credibly she will handle the transition that is to come, but by the time she is strutting her stuff in the Havana café scene all doubts have vanished. The handling of that scene, incidentally, is one of this production's triumphs.
The two outstanding performances though, in my view, are Douglas Hodge as Nathan Detroit and Jane Krakowski as Miss Adelaide. Both play their caricaturish parts to the hilt without losing any credibility; indeed, they manage to imbue them with a credibility that is perhaps lacking in the script, and with an engaging humanity. In defiance of any common sense, you find yourself caring about Miss Adelaide's dumb-blonde matrimonial fantasies, and about Nathan's juggling to keep his game simultaneously afloat and outside her knowledge.
Further strong performances come from Martin Ellis as Nicely Nicely Johnson and Cory English as Benny Southstreet. These two characters are co-opted from other Runyon stories (although Runyon aficionados like me are always puzzled as to why the Nicely Nicely Jones of the stories has his surname transposed to Johnson). They provide a kind of chorus to the musical - commenting, linking scenes, and managing the pace. They also lead some of the most memorable song-and-dance routines, including the opening "Fugue for Tinhorns" and the keynote "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat".
Other numbers from the musical that have become standards, incidentally, are 'Luck be a Lady', 'Bushel and a Peck' and 'If I were a Bell'. All are performed with pizzazz or panache, as appropriate.
Particularly memorable among the supporting cast is Sévan Stephan for his cameo as Big Jule, the menacing high roller and bad loser from Chicago. Altogether, though, if there's any weak link in the cast, I failed to detect it.
The music and lyrics for Guys and Dolls were written by Frank Loesser, working within a script prepared by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling, with the first production appearing, appropriately enough, on Broadway in 1950. Damon Runyon himself never wrote for stage or screen, although by an ironic coincidence he was commissioned not long before his death in 1946 to script a Hollywood picture to star Bing Crosby - and hence presumably a musical. That script was never completed.
Between them, Loesser, Burrows and Swerling did manage to recreate something of Runyon's unique world, but the Broadway of Guys and Dolls is subtly different from the Broadway of the original stories. One enjoys the stories for the narrative style, the verbal humour and the improbable, outsize characters. The improbability is offset by the sheer enjoyment to be derived from Runyon's language - a vernacular of his own invention, though drawing heavily on all the ethnic New York argots he heard around him.
Bringing Runyon to the stage means losing the narrative that kept readers involved in the stories; an audience's involvement has to sustained - and disbelief suspended - by other means, and the means is musical. It works. It works fine, but it makes the experience different from the more literary enjoyment to be derived from the stories.
For this reason I shall always come away from any performance of Guys and Dolls with a slight sense of disappointment - disappointment that it is not quite pure Runyon. But even as I do so I am conscious of being foolishly and inappropriately purist. The stage show should be enjoyed in its own right, and it can be enormously enjoyable.
This production is enormously enjoyable, a great night out, and I unhesitantly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a top class musical.
Guys and Dolls is on at the Piccadilly Theatre, Denman Street, London W1. Anyone thinking of booking primarily to see Ewan McGregor should be aware that he is unlikely to continue to appear in it after the end of 2005. That will be a loss, but not a devastating one. There is plenty of talent elsewhere among the cast to carry the production without him.
