MacEwan cast aces Broadway classic
So, there’s this Damon Runyon guy, an ink-stained sports scribe crankin’ it in the Big Apple of the 1930s. When he’s not covering the likes of Babe Ruth or Jack Dempsey, six’ll get ya’ five, his battered Smith Corona is churning out tales of Nathan Detroit, Harry the Horse, Nicely Nicely Johnson, Good Time Charlie and Dave the Dude.
These short stories are all told in present tense and with colourful slang made up by the author. Runyon was on his way to becoming one of the best known humorists in America. In 1950, four years after his death (his ashes were spread over Broadway from an aircraft), Broadway pros Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows got together, wove a couple of Runyon classics together and in about a New York minute created Guys and Dolls, one of the most successful musicals in the history of the Great White Way – up there with Show Boat, Oklahoma and My Fair Lady as setting the mark for all that followed.
Guys and Dolls: A Musical Fable of Broadway is the current production from Grant MacEwan Theatre Arts, until March 30 at the Triffo Theatre.
You know you’re in for a good evening with the first funky blast from the Cracker-Jack band in the pit under Erik Mortimer. What follows is a show from Broadway’s golden years performed by a bunch of gung-ho kids who weren’t even born back then. This is a company that “gets it,” and crawls right into the skin of the fabulously flamboyant flim-flam artists, con men, gamblers, hustlers and their chorines, floozies and broads of Runyan’s “the devil’s own city.”
These dawn-to-dusk characters join in a frantic search for a spot, free from the unwavering gaze of the cops, to stage “The Oldest Established Permanent, Floating Crap Game in New York.” We are immediately drawn into the world as three race track touts sing the Fugue for Tinhorns. “I got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere and there’s a guy who says if the weather’s clear – can do!”
The entire cast deserved the standing ovation they got at the end of the night, but a stand-out is Kendra Sargeant as Sarah Brown, the missionary who can’t get the miscreants into her Broadway mission – effectively earnest with a melting soprano and a healthy dash of spunk in her wistful main solo, If I Were a Bell. Another standout is Dempsey Bolton – loaded with a cool charm and a killer tenor playing the legendary gambler Sky Masterson, particularly in the muscular delivery of his big number, Luck Be a Lady. He falls for Sarah when the two take a trip to the hot spot Havana, way before the coming of Castro.
Director Leigh Rivenbark has assembled an outstanding supporting cast – in fact, not a bad voice in the lot. Miss Adelaide is a sexy bundle of pulchritude full of bumps, wiggles and squeaks (Elizabeth Turner, mastering the accent and sounding as if she was born on Flatbush Avenue). Her famous show-stopping solo Adelaide’s Lament is probably the experience you’ll carry home with you. Miss Adelaide has hung on to a 14 year engagement with the hapless gambler Nathan Detroit (Austin From). The rest of the evening is composed of various pairings of the denizens of the area. Sargeant and Bolton sing a lovely song I’ll Know, and again with I’ve Never Been in Love Before. Turner turns up the heat in two “hot box” numbers (don’t ask), A Bushel and a Peck and Take Back Your Mink.
Nicely Nicely Johnson (Aran Wilson-McAnally) and Benny Southstreet (Darian Ames) really sell the title song and Wilson-McAnally returns for a memorable shot at the faux-spiritual Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.
Laura Krewski’s spirited choreography is delivered by the game cast ranging from “hot and sexy (Havana)” to peppy vaudeville. Alison Yanota’s serviceable set uses huge skyscrapers and up close Broadway show signs to create its own excitement while supporting the overall glitzy effect.
By my count there have been five revivals on Broadway and the last one I saw had Nathan Lane as Nicely Nicely Johnson. There is perhaps no Nathan Lane here but the 19 on that stage give it the old “let’s put on a show” zest. The over the top characterizations are bang on, Marian Truscott’s costumes are gloriously outrageous. Director Leigh Rivenbark and a talented company of young people have taken a Broadway classic and revisited it with wit and charm.
The program tells us that this production is the culmination and course fulfillment for their final year. My suggestion is to pass the whole lot with flying colours.
