50 Favourite Musicals: 1b: GUYS AND DOLLS (1950) (Frank Loesser)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life. So here we are...  a year and 10 months in the making and we have reached the stage musical that is my favourite ever - and I cannot name one out of the four shows that I have left to consider.

I have tried every criteria, every angle and there is simply no way I can say that one of the four is better than the other.  So let's go... my Top Four Number One's (in alphabetical order)

First performed: 1950, 46th Street Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1982, Olivier Theatre, London

Productions seen: seven

Score: Frank Loesser

Book: Jo Swerling / Abe Burrows

Plot: Set in Damon Runyon's New York of gamblers, gangsters and showgirls. Nathan Detroit has nowhere to hold his all-night crap game, the cops have their eyes on him and he is fending off the growing impatience of his fiancee, cabaret singer Miss Adelaide, after an engagement of 14 years. Nathan finds a location but needs to raise an advance payment of $1,000.  Desperate for the dough, he bets legendary gambler Sky Masterson the same amount that he cannot take strait-laced Sgt Sarah Brown from the local Save-A-Soul Mission to dinner in Havana.  There's no way he can lose the bet... is there?

Five memorable numbers: SIT DOWN YOU'RE ROCKING THE BOAT, LUCK BE A LADY, I'VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE, ADELAIDE'S LAMENT, MORE I CANNOT WISH YOU

GUYS nearly lost out on a shared Number 1 spot simply because I have seen a few productions that I felt had not done it justice but eventually I had to overlook this as the first one I saw was definitive and I feel oddly protective of the show.  GUYS AND DOLLS literally changed my life.
   

In 1950, producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin announced a new musical based on Damon Runyan's short stories THE IDYLL OF MISS SARAH BROWN and BLOOD PRESSURE and chose Frank Loesser to write the score, fresh from his debut Broadway success WHERE'S CHARLEY? and winning an Academy Award for writing "Baby It's Cold Outside" the previous year.  The job of adapting the stories was given to Jo Swerling who was later replaced by Abe Burrows - however by that time, Loesser had nearly completed the score, so Burrows had the double chore of writing a new funnier script while also slotting in Loesser's songs.  He succeeded wonderfully as GUYS AND DOLLS is judged to have one of the greatest books in Broadway history.  The show was an instant hit when it opened, winning five Tony Awards and running for 1,200 performances.  London first saw it in 1953 with Sam Levene and Vivian Blane repeating their Broadway roles of Nathan and Miss Adelaide.  Two years later, Blane played Adelaide in the hit film version with Sinatra, Brando and Jean Simmons.

In 1971 Laurence Olivier was going to stage GUYS AND DOLLS for the National Theatre at the Old Vic with him as Nathan, Geraldine McEwan as Adelaide and Denis Quilley as Sky but his poor health at the time gave the NT Board a reason to cancel it; the thinking being should they really be staging an American musical?  In 1982 when Richard Eyre was invited by Peter Hall to stage three shows at the National Theatre he still had to battle this opposition but successfully - and rightfully - argued that GUYS AND DOLLS was as much a classic of American Theatre as anything by O'Neill, Williams or Miller.  He had the perfect team with David Toguri as choreographer, set designer John Gunter and lighting designer David Hersey's eye-popping sets featuring Times Square neon signs hanging over the stage and Sue Blaine's vivid costumes.  

Before 1982 I went to the theatre to look at stars; Joan Collins, Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Bell, Cheryl Campbell etc. and that was exactly why I wanted to see GUYS AND DOLLS at the National - Ian Charleson was my new acting hero after CHARIOTS OF FIRE, Julie Covington was a heroine from ROCK FOLLIES and I loved Bob Hoskins from PENNIES FROM HEAVEN and THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY.  Of course the show sold out from the off and I was clueless how I would get to see it.  The NT then announced they would have a Bargain Night - all seats in it's three theatres at £2 each to personal callers on the day, I was up for the challenge.  I arrived at 7am to join one of the longest queues I had ever seen and when they opened, I slowly shuffled to the door, sure it would be sold out - I walked away with two front-row seats!  And so it came to pass that at 7:15pm on August 6th 1982, my life changed.  I suddenly experienced the alchemy that can happen between an audience and a cast of extraordinary performers, they generated pure stage electricity which we returned with loud excitement.  I went back countless times after that performance, even sleeping overnight outside the box office door with other front-row regulars which was a wonderful experience where I made new friends.  I went back to relive that magical first time, sometimes it happened, but each experience made me realise that I was now a theatre fan.

'A good cast is worth repeating' was frequently seen at the end of old films so here they are - William Armstrong, Mark Bond, James Carter (equally memorable as Chicago gangster Big Jule and a Havana drag queen!), Ian Charleson (unforgettable as Sky, wry and laid back but singing in a glorious tenor voice), Sally Cooper, Julie Covington (a perfect steely Sgt. Sarah), Irlin Hall, David Healy (winning the SWET Award for Best Musical Supporting Performance as the jovial Nicely-Nicely Johnson), Fiona Hendley, Bob Hoskins (delicious as the exasperated Nathan Detroit), Rachel Izen (giving some serious face as a jaundiced Hot Box Girl), Julia McKenzie (winner of the SWET Award for Best Musical Actress as the definitive Miss Adelaide, hilarious but wistful, a real belter with a bawdy laugh), John Normington (touching as Sarah's protecting grandfather and always able to make me blub singing "More I Cannot Wish You"), Robert Oates, Bill Paterson (a great conniving Harry The Horse), Kevin Quarmby, Robert Ralph, Barrie Rutter (a shuffling Benny Southstreet straight off Runyon's pages), Bernard Sharpe, Belinda Sinclair, Imelda Staunton (a sour-faced Hot Box Girl and a hilariously short Cuban dancer), Harry Towb (a perfect blustering Lt. Brannigan), Larrington Walker, Richard Walsh, Norman Warwick and Kevin Williams (stealing each scene he was in).  Stars all, some shining from afar now.  This wonderful cast came together one last time in November 1990 to play a matinee and evening performance to honour the memory of both Ian Charleson and Norman Warwick who had both died in the past year: a very special memory.

Needless to say I have yet to see a production to match this although the subsequent revivals of Eyre's prodution gave us a sizzling Sky Masterson from Clarke Peters, Imelda's feisty Adelaide when she took over from Julia, Betsy Brantley's sweet-voiced Sarah and a memorable Nathan Detroit from Bernard Cribbins. The 2005 Donmar production that played at the Piccadilly Theatre couldn't really compete with the show ingrained in my mind but had nice performances from Jane Krakowski as a sexier Miss Adelaide and Jenna Russell as a dry-as-dust Sgt. Sarah.  It ran for two years however,  The recent 2014 Chichester revival and subsequent West End transfer directed by Gordon Greenberg made me happier though as did the neon-bright performance of Sophie Thompson as Miss Adelaide, Jamie Parker as Sky and David Haig as Nathan Detroit; I remember thinking as my fellow audience members in the Chichester auditorium lapped up Frank Loesser's classic score and Abe Burrows' great gags and sympathetic characters that hopefully there was a young theatregoer who would discover the magic of theatre through this glorious show.

There was only one choice for a video... THE SOUTH BANK SHOW did a profile on Richard Eyre and his company in rehearsal so here is a wonderful chance to savour the pure pleasure they gave me - Ian Charleson singing "Luck Be A Lady", the opening number "Runyonland", Julia McKenzie and the Hot Box Girls singing "Bushel and A Peck", Julie Covington singing "I'll Know" to Ian, Bob Hoskins with James Carter, Bill Paterson and Barrie Rutter in the crap-game scene, Ian singing "I've Never Been In Love Before" to Julie, and finally David Healy stopping the show as he always did with "Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat".

The 9th Annual Chrissie Awards... may I have the envelope please?

Yes it is that time again, get your best schmatta on and be seated in time for the ceremony, it is New Year which must mean the awarding of the 9th Annual Chrissies... theatreland's most sought-after awards.

BEST DRAMA (Original/Revival)

 

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE - Arthur Miller (Wyndhams)

 

Nominees:

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES - Hampton (Donmar) / NOT I; FOOTFALLS; ROCKABY - Beckett (The Pit) / MR. FOOTE'S OTHER LEG - Kelly (Hampstead) / THE MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE HAT - Guirgis (Lyttelton)

BEST MUSICAL (Original/Revival)

GYPSY - Arthur Laurents / Jule Styne / Stephen Sondheim (Savoy)

Nominees:

GRAND HOTEL - Davis / Wright / Forrest / Yeston (Southwark) / KINKY BOOTS - Fierstein / Lauper (Adelphi) / SWEENEY TODD - Wheeler / Sondheim (Coliseum) / XANADU - Carter Beane / Farrar / Lynne (Southwark Playhouse)

BEST BALLET/OPERA *new award*

  WOOLF WORKS - Wayne McGregor (Covent Garden)

Nominees:

MONOTONES I & II; THE TWO PIGEONS - Ashton (Covent Garden) / THE NUTCRACKER - Wright (Covent Garden) / ROMEO AND JULIET - McMillan (Covent Garden) / SLEEPING BEAUTY - Bourne (Sadler's Wells)

BEST ACTOR (Drama)

 SIMON RUSSELL BEALE - Mr Foote's Other Leg (Hampstead)

Nominees:

SIMON RUSSELL BEALE (Temple) / CHIWETEL EJIOFOR (Everyman) / JONATHAN PRYCE (The Merchant of Venice) / MARK STRONG (A View From The Bridge)

BEST ACTRESS (Drama)

 

LISA DWAN - Not I; Footfalls; Rockaby (The Pit)

Nominees:

JANET McTEER (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) / JULIET STEVENSON (Happy Days) / ZOE WANAMAKER (Stevie) / PENELOPE WILTON (Taken At Midnight)

BEST ACTOR (Musical)

KILLIAN DONNELLY - Kinky Boots (Adelphi)

Nominees:

SCOTT GARNHAM (Grand Hotel) / DAVID HAIG (Guys and Dolls) / MATT HENRY (Kinky Boots) / JAMIE PARKER (Guys and Dolls)

BEST ACTRESS (Musical)

  IMELDA STAUNTON - Gypsy (Savoy)

Nominees:

CARLY ANDERSON (Xanadu) / JANIE DEE (A Little Night Music)

EMMA THOMPSON (Sweeney Todd) / SOPHIE THOMPSON (Guys and Dolls)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama)

MARK GATISS - Three Days In The Country (Lyttelton)

Nominees:

SEAN CAMPION (All The Angels) / DERMOT CROWLEY (Everyman) / PEARCE QUIGLEY (The Beaux Strategm) / YUL VASQUEZ (The Motherfucker With The Hat)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama)

JUDI DENCH - The Winter's Tale (Garrick)

Nominees:

KATE DUCHENE (Everyman) / DERVLA KERWIN (Mr Foote's Other Leg) / SYLVESTRA LE TOUZEL (Waste) / OLIVIA WILLIAMS (Waste)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (Musical)

 JAMIE PARKER - A Little Night Music (Palace)

Nominees:

DAN BURTON (Gypsy) / NEIL McCAUL (Guys and Dolls) / PHILIP QUAST (Sweeney Todd) / GEORGE RAE (Grand Hotel)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Musical)

LARA PULVER - Gypsy (Savoy) 

Nominees:

CYNTHIA ERRIVO (Songs For A New World) / HAYDN GWYNNE (Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown) / LAURA PITT-PULFORD (A Little Night Music) / JOANNA RIDING (A Little Night Music)

BEST BALLET/OPERA MALE *new award*

 

STEVEN McRAE - Romeo and Juliet (Covent Garden)

Nominees:

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (The Nutcracker) / STEVEN McRAE (The Nutcracker) / STEVEN McRAE (The Two Pigeons) / GEORGE RAE (Grand Hotel)

BEST BALLET/OPERA FEMALE *new award*

ALESSANDRA FERRI - Woolf Works (Covent Garden)

Nominees:

FRANCESCA HAYWARD (The Nutcracker) / IANA SALENKO (The Nutcracker) / IANA SALENKO (Romeo and Juliet) / IANA SALENKO (The Two Pigeons)

BEST DIRECTOR

IVO VAN HOVE - A View From The Bridge (Wyndhams)

Nominees:

Walter Asmus (Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby) / Richard Eyre (Mr Foote's Other Leg) / Jonathan Munby (The Merchant of Venice) / Indhu Rubasingham (The Motherfucker With The Hat)

BEST DESIGNER

 ES DEVLIN - Hamlet (Barbican)

 Nominees:

CIGUÉ, WE NOT I, WAYNE McGREGOR (Woolf Works) / ROBERT JONES (The Motherfucker With The Hat) / KATRINA LINDSAY (Dara) / JAN VERSWEYVELD (A View From the Bridge)

BEST LIGHTING

 NEIL AUSTIN - Dara (Lyttelton)

Nominees:

LUCY CARTER (Woolf Works) / JAMES FARNCOMBE (Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby) / TIM MITCHELL (Taken At Midnight) / JAN VERSWEYVELD (A View From The Bridge)

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY (Musical)

 JERRY MITCHELL - Kinky Boots (Adelphi)

Nominees:

DREW McONIE (In The Heights) / TIM PROUD (Grand Hotel) / SUSAN STROMAN (The Scottsboro Boys) / NATHAN M. WRIGHT (Xanadu)

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY (Ballet) *new award*

WAYNE McGREGOR - Woolf Works (Covent Garden)

Nominees:

FREDERICK ASHTON (Monotones I & II/The Two Pigeons) / DAVID BINTLEY (The King Dances) / KENNETH McMILLAN (Romeo and Juliet) / PETER WRIGHT (The Nutcracker)

GUYS AND DOLLS - Following GYPSY from Chichester to London...

You can almost hear the owners of the Savoy Theatre when they realised that Imelda Staunton in GYPSY was such a massive success, calling up the Chichester Festival Theatre and saying "Um.. you don't have any more like that do you?"  Luckily for them they did, namely their 2014 revival of GUYS AND DOLLS - which is now playing the Savoy until next March.

There might still be someone in Buttkick, Idaho that does not know that the 1982 National Theatre production directed by Richard Eyre was the production that turned me into a huge theatre fan but it's true.  That production captured me and made me it's own, and while I have seen a few revivals since that have seemed almost cowed by the status of both the musical itself and the NT production, the good news is that I enjoyed Gordon Greenberg's Chichester production enough to want to see it again in it's London transfer.

Yes there are still times that I wonder how such an obvious laughline can be overlooked or mis-handled, yes I can wonder why the orchestrations are sometimes seeming to rush through the songs almost as if embarrassed at the score's riches and yes, sometimes I wonder why the performers sometimes attack the roles like a rugby prop-forward when if they could just relax into it the laughs will come, they just need to trust the material more.

In the transfer to London a key cast change has given the production a new lease of life, namely David Haig as Nathan Detroit.  He has invigorated it and given the scenes involving Nathan and Adelaide a new weight where as in Chichester the show was seemingly all about Jamie Parker's Sky Masterson.

Haig gives his man-nearing-the-end-of-his-tether routine a new shake of the dice and presents us with a Nathan that we can care for and he has a perfect foil in Sophie Thompson's Miss Adelaide. Although still not showing the vulnerable heart of the character, Sophie's performance prompted a huge ovation again at the curtain call which was lovely to witness!

Jamie Parker is still ruling the roost as Sky Masterson and he is now partnered by Siubhan Harrison who certainly captures the steel in Sister Sarah but - like Clare Foster in Chichester - doesn't quite show the girl beneath the Missionary uniform.

The supporting cast all work well with Neil McCaul excelling as a Gorbals Arvide Abernathy and Gavin Spokes certainly seizes his big moment in "Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat" which now also pops up at the curtain call for a tambourine-friendly encore.

A major component of the show is Peter McKintosh's bright and colourful set of shards of Times Square billboards and Tim Mitchell's lighting design.  I must admit that I again found Carlos Acosta's much-vaunted choreography to be fairly uninspiring and lacking focus.

Coming away from the show I felt very proud that I had the good fortune to start my real theatre-going life with such a bona fide Broadway classic.  33 years on, it is a measure of Richard Eyre's production that while watching this revival, I can still half-close my eyes and see Ian Charleson, Julie Covington, Bob Hoskins, Julia McKenzie, David Healy, John Normington, Bill Paterson, Jim Carter, Harry Towb, Belinda Sinclair, Rachel Izen and that new doll to the London stage, Imelda Staunton.

However, even without those ghosts in the memory, you will have a great time at the Savoy...

HIGH SOCIETY at the Old Vic... Flat Fizz

The irritating proliferation of films-turned-into-stage-musicals in recent years had several forerunners.  In 1987 Richard Eyre, five years after his magnificent production of GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre, gave musicals another go - only this time in the West End - with his own stage adaptation of the 1956 film HIGH SOCIETY at the Victoria Palace.

It proved a disappointing affair despite the luminous Natasha Richardson as Tracy, she wore a Sue Blane-designed yellow dress in the second act that has stayed long in the memory.

Another adaptation, this time by US playwright Arthur Kopit, opened and closed on Broadway in 1998 and this version appeared in 2005 at the Open Air Regents Park which then unsuccessfully transferred to the Shaftesbury.

And now the Kopit version is revived at the Old Vic, rather puzzlingly ending Kevin Spacey's tenure as Artistic Director.  In his first season, Spacey revived the musical's source play THE PHILADELPHIA STORY so he obviously has some affection for the piece but not enough to appear in the musical version.

It is on for a rather ambitious four month run but from the look of the Dress Circle on the night we went it will be interesting to see if it stays the course.  As I watched the show something niggled away at me, a thought that had come to me when blogging about another show - but what show? What niggle?  Luckily for you, Constant Reader, I remembered.

Last December we saw the stage adaptation of WHITE CHRISTMAS - oddly enough another film-to-stage version of a Bing Crosby musical.  I have always thought HIGH SOCIETY a fairly innocuous film musical but one that seems to be held in high regard.  Along with WHITE CHRISTMAS, what the film succeeds in is being a star vehicle with the performers all playing up to their persona's: Crosby is witty and wise, Frank Sinatra is cynical and wisecracking, Celeste Holm is a friendly sidekick, Louis Armstrong is all grins and eye-popping and Grace Kelly... well, she's just Grace Kelly.

And here is the troubling thing when films like these are transplanted to the stage... where are the Star performers needed to make them work - genuine stars with comparable persona's to make you forget the originals who we all know?  You can cast perfectly fine actors but if they do not have that pure star wattage how will they ever eclipse the originals and if they cannot do that, what is the point in staging it in the first place?

Both the Eyre and the current version go the fine actor route: Eyre cast Trevor Eve, Richardson, Stephen Rea and Angela Richards as the four leads while here director Maria Friedman has picked the lesser-wattage of Rupert Young, Kate Fleetwood, Jamie Parker and Annabel Scholey.

But both productions have seemed to be in denial, they want to stage HIGH SOCIETY but too often what they really want to do is THE PHILADELPHIA STORY with songs which are too different things completely.

Of the ten songs in Cole Porter's film score, Richard Eyre used eight adding five other Porter compositions while Friedman uses only seven from the film with a whacking twelve others interpolated.  It all smacks of not being sure of their source doesn't it?  As Eyre did with Richardson, Maria Friedman has directed Kate Fleetwood to play it as Katharine Hepburn but Fleetwood's strangled attempt at a Bryn Mawr accent at times made her sound retarded which was a shame because when she sang she had a very strong voice.

Friedman directed the last revival of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in 2012 which had critics raving but I found to be horribly over-pitched and she has done the same thing here - what should be champagne fizz is more like Iron Bru.  By and large loud and over-stated, it all smacks of Friedman's own over-emphatic singing style where consonants are hit like a cow's arse with a banjo.

Fleetwood playing effervescent comes across as a loud woman waving her arms over her head and there is horrible over-playing from Richard Grieve as Tracy's soon-to-be husband and Ellie Bamber as the know-it-all younger sister.  The impossibly tall Rupert Young is personable in the Crosby role but little more and the best performances come from Barbara Flynn as Mrs Lord and the double act of Jamie Parker and Annabel Scholey as the gossip magazine journalists gate-crashing the wedding.  But again Parker who is usually so reliable, had moments when he over-pitched the performance not only to the back of the theatre but to Waterloo Station up the road.

In lieu of Louis Armstrong Friedman has jazz pianist Joe Stilgoe appear occasionally and like his father Richard, a little of him goes a long way.  Friedman's over-emphasis stretches to the dance numbers too, they seem so set on being showstopping that they go on and on and on, losing the shape of the actual song and one claps more out of relief that they have stopped than anything else.  The very long second act opener at least showcased the excellent tapping of dancer Omari Douglas.

There is no reason I can think of for this production to be staged in the round unless it was to cram more people in to their hoped-for money-spinner but Peter Mumford's lighting helps set some atmosphere.

Can we now please put this show to bed as non-workable and stick to the original film?