Guys & Dolls

All you need to know is that this classsy production is pure five out of five stars, ten out of ten stuff. Upstairs At The Gatehouse theatre in Highgate Village is famed for the quality of its Christmas musicals but, for all the brilliance it has come up with in recent years, their current run of Guys and Dolls surely outdoes all of its past triumphs.

People may say that the source material – Damon Runyan’s delicious opposites-attract story of a lifetime gambler crossing paths with a Salvation Army sergeant struggling to tidy the streets of sinners – is hard to get wrong; that anybody with half a lung could sing Luck Be A Lady or Sit Down, You’re Rocking The Boat and have a good chance of getting toes tapping.

But this is West End quality on a stage just up the road and the imagination in the telling by director Racky Plews is supreme. We should count ourselves lucky there is a place like this two ticks from Pond Square.

The respect held for this playhouse in theatre world means they always command an experienced cast.

Jamie Sampson as chief gambler Sky Masterson connects with Amy Bailey as Sister Sarah like they’re dancing the rumba at the Palladium.

The combination is truly magical. But it’s not all about the leads. Chronic street dodger Nathan Detroit is a role that can be ruined if the wit of the character is overtaken by farce.

James Kermack avoids that pitfall. Rebecca Sutherland meanwhile threatens to steal the show as his long-suffering fiancée Miss Adelaide. Big eyes, big voice, you get lost in her lament.

There are so many reasons to recommend. Seriously, go see it.

****

Anyone hankering for a small but heart-swelling production of a great American musical at highly affordable prices should make a bee-line to this family-run venue in North London. Directed by Racky Plews, it could well be the first-ever Fringe production of Frank Loesser’s 1950 classic. Whether or not this information is entirely accurate, all I know is that I enjoyed Plews’ intimate, traverse staging considerably more than the West End revival headlined by Ewan McGregor in 2005.
When done with as much affectionate care and detailed invention as it receives here, Guys and Dolls seems just about the most perfect show. Plews and a 13-strong ensemble breathe fresh life into a book (by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows) based on some of Damon Runyon’s tall tales about various lovable rogues whose racy turf is the underbelly of midtown Manhattan. The script fuses cartoon gangsterism from a bygone era with comic romance embodied by two couples whose troubled love lives dovetail beautifully. The whole enterprise is wrapped up in a witty, hummable score by Loesser that remains an evergreen gift to performers and audiences alike.

I said there are 13 all-singing, all-dancing actors in Plews’s production but a New

Year’s Day injury meant I saw only 12. Such are the hazards of staging neat yet admirably expansive dance routines (devised by Lee Proud) in a confined space. In true showbiz spirit the remaining cast members have rallied to fill the gap. The result is a smoothly oiled ensemble performance with five-star aspirations, many of which it achieves.
Plews has picked her leading actors wisely. Jamie Sampson plays the high-rolling gambler Sky Masterson as a smart, cocky charmer.
Little wonder that, despite an initial resistance, Amy Bailey’s prim urban missionary Sarah Brown melts. This girl, it turns out, has fire in the belly.
There’s nothing secondary about the performances of James Kermack, cast as the marriage-shy crap game addict Nathan Detroit, or Rebecca Sutherland, whose utterly endearing turn as the psychosomatically flu-ridden nightclub performer Miss Adelaide is fuelled by a huge talent. All four leads are delightful, a quality that spreads like a welcome infection to the rest of the cast and then to anyone lucky enough to be in the audience.

Time Out ****

Users *****

The Fringe’s recent winning streak of musical adaptations continues into 2012 with this raucously fun version of the enduring 1950 Broadway hit by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Director Racky Plews proves that less is more, eschewing the razzmatazz of other revivals to make a virtue of the Gatehouse’s smaller space. Traverse staging, tangled telephone cords, peeling posters and cheekily well-timed audience participation bring to heightened life the shabby streets of a Midtown Manhattan populated by wise-cracking gangsters, loveable con-artists and showgirls.

This is a ‘Guys and Dolls’ closely in tune with the Prohibition era of the short stories by Damon Runyon, on which the musical is based.

Jamie Sampson is a slick but serious-minded Sky Masterson, the gambler who falls for missionary Sarah Brown (Amy Bailey) after Nathan Detroit – desperate to raise money for a floating crap game – bets Masterson that he can’t get her to go to Cuba with him.

Bailey is hilarious when the pair reach Havana, downing cocktails and dancing with gleeful abandon as this buttoned-up believer cuts loose. Together, she and Sampson create a touching romance among the plot’s assorted hi-jinks.

Rebecca Sutherland steals the show as brassy, big-hearted Miss Adelaide, nightclub singer and Detroit’s long-suffering fiancée of 14 years. Lighting up the stage whenever she totters on to it, she wrings every drop of wit from the brilliant ‘Adelaide’s Lament’.

Inventive choreography and atmospheric lighting mean that tent-pole numbers ‘Luck Be a Lady’ and ‘Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat’ (sung with gusto by Patrick Rufey as Nicely Nicely Johnson) also grab your attention and don’t let go. This production is one gamble that has paid off dazzlingly.

Innovative staging and an exceptional cast lift popular musical to whole new level

Damon Runyon invented the richest set of characters in American literature. His guys are petty criminals, gamblers, always ,escaping the law and yet utterly loveable. This, show, based on Runyon’s short stories, has been described as the most perfect musical – without a single dud tune and it is everybody’s favourite – so well known that it is difficult to avoid singing along to Frank Loesser’s brilliant music and lyrics.
It has had many productions in the West End and at the National but this one is a superlative interpretation by Racky Plews with a magical cast and probably the most prestigious creative team in London. Lee Proud (resident choreographer on Billy Elliot) staged the wonderful High Society at the Gatehouse and his work here is equally innovative. The famous mission number Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat is excitingly staged.
The set by Martin Thomas, twice nominated for Gatehouse productions in the Off West End Awards, is a miracle of ingenuity. On a bare traverse acting area, he and Racky have managed to perform multiple set changes without the aid of black boxes or blackouts and

lighting designer Howard Hudson is simply one of the very best in British theatre. The band is somewhere up above and hidden. Joanna Chichonska has her work cut out as musical director and succeeds without a hitch.

An exceptional cast has been brought together on this project. Jamie Sampson is charismatic and mellow voiced as Sky and Amy Bailey as Sarah really comes into her own in the comedy sequences in Havana. Especially impressive are Patrick Rufey and Jos Slovick as Nicely Nicely and Benny who do a brilliant and acrobatic rendering of the title song. Rebecca Sutherland is hilarious and poignant as Adelaide, the “cold” song (Adelaide’s Second Lament) has never been sung better and James Kermack is suitably harassed as her long-lasting fiancé, the dodgy Nathan Detroit.

This is a show that is full of joy, love and high professionalism. Its run has also been extended so you have plenty of time to be part of the gang.

A great show Guys and Dolls, packed with classic numbers that most people reading this could probably sing at the drop of a hat, or more appropriately the throw of a dice. On opening night in Highgate people were queuing for returns and this production is already a hot ticket, but does it meet their expectations, does this London Fringe première pull it off? Yes, definitely yes!

Director Racky Plews delivers a show full of energy and joie de vivre. She plays it on a traverse that brings everyone within almost touching distance of the action and stages it so that it is performed to the whole house without ever making any obvious contrivance in the blocking.

This is the seedy side of Broadway and Martin Thomas’s design places it in a grey world with tired looking posters lining the rails in front of the audience seating. At one end the band is perched above a pair of square grey arches that could lead into a yard or a gangster hideaway; at the other a wooden scaffold suggests racetrack starting gates, though part of it moves forward and becomes the façade of the shop used as the Salvation Army mission. That’s it, apart from tables, chairs, props and a newsvendor’s tired cart, but it still bursts into colour as it is peopled by the characters of Damon Runyon’s underworld seen through his indulgently rose-tinted eyes.

It is strongly cast and imaginatively choreographed, some of the hottest dancing being in the transitions between scenes which are skilfully contrived and meticulously matched to the moving arches. The sense of street life which marks the opening number begins with characters crossing the stage even before the overture and is sustained throughout with a NY cop used for the rephrased request to turn off mobile phones.

Clever business entwining three telephone cords for three gamblers placing bets (“Fugue for Tinhorns”) establishes a pattern which is decidedly show time not naturalistic and the choreography really takes off

in the prelude to the Havana sequence, amazingly performed in the confines of the space. This is a cast that can really dance as well as sing. There aren’t enough of them to provide the extra hoodlums to make up the dozen sinners that Sky Masterson (Jamie Sampson) promises Salvationist Sarah Brown (Amy Bailey) he will bring to a midnight prayer meeting but with the help of a few hats and prayer books the audience make up the numbers.

This Sky and Sarah are charming, rather than overly charismatic, which is right for this production, though rum produces a remarkable transformation in Bailey’s sedate Sarah on their trip to Havana. They may be the main romance but in this show every character makes an impact from Connor Dowling’s snarling policeman, who always seems to have a bad smell under his sharp nose, to Anthony McGill’s gentle Irish Salvationist who with “More I Cannot Wish You” reveals one of the best voices on stage.

Rebecca Sutherland makes Adelaide a real trouper, touching in “Adelaide’s Lament” and hilarious leading her toe-tapping colleagues Leanne Tain Marshall and Hayley Ellen Scott in the Hot Box cabaret numbers with great style. Meanwhile as her beloved Nathan Detroit (fourteen years engaged still not married) James Kermack gives us a softie beneath his bachelor stubbornness.

Patrick Rufey and Jos Slovik make a great double-act as Nicely and Benny and Paul Bullion’s Harry the Horse, Matthew John Gregory’s Angie the Ox complete these likable underworld characters in contrast to David Muscat’s obnoxious Big Jule.

The band, well-balanced against the voices, the lighting, and Lee Proud’s vigorous choreography — all come together to make this an excellent ensemble production from which it is certainly not the sets you’ll go home singing.

Still the Greatest Floating Crap Game, a great outing for guys and dolls.

This venerable musical by Frank Loesser based on the Damon Runyon stories – it opened on Broadway in 1950 – is arguably the greatest of all musicals. It has a perfect book (Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows) and witty lyrics, and a succession of marvellous songs (by Loesser), not a dud among them, although that did not stop the film version starring Sinatra and Brando ditching five numbers and putting in three new ones (by Loesser fortunately). It is not a fool proof show. The last Broadway revival was a flop.

But this fringe production is no miss. It has a hard working cast of 13, slick direction by Racky Plews, and a standout performance from Rebecca Sutherland as Miss Adelaide, the redheaded broad with a permanent cold, engaged for 14 years to Nathan Detroit, who runs the aforesaid floating crap game.

Plews has given it a traverse staging – the audience sits on opposite sides of the acting space which is in effect a corridor – my least favourite way of disposing of seating. It creates some awkward staging problems, mostly overcome. The show is also miked, which, given there is a decent band under Joanna Cichonska, is probably necessary, but in a house this size ought not to be needed. Whatever happened to voice production?

Some of the American accents are dicey, and occasionally the pace slackens, but when Adelaide, who gets the best songs, comes along it takes wing. Give that girl back her mink! Anthony McGill delivers a splendid More I Cannot Wish, an object lesson to all around, as the uncle of Sarah Brown – sweetly sung by Amy Bailey – the Salvation Army girl wooed by gambler Sky Masterson, a sturdy, Jamie Sampson. Patrick Ruffy duly rocks the boat as Nicely Nicely and James Kermack is a suitably shifty Nathan.

It makes the perfect outing for all guys and dolls seeking to dispel those New Year blues.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

2011 really has been a fantastic year for fringe musicals in London. Theatres south of the river like the Landor, the Union and Southwark Playhouse have delivered works of great precision and concentrated passion, but at this late juncture in the year, the team Upstairs at the Gatehouse have redressed the balance northwards with an audaciously thrilling production of Frank Loesser’s classic Guys and Dolls, the first fringe version of it to be seen in London. Noo Yoik gangsters, gamblers, showgirls, missionaries and compulsive eaters all come together as guys chase unattainable dolls and other dolls try to get their guys down the aisle whilst they’re trying to organise a little gambling tournament. And of course it is all accompanied by one of the most glorious scores in musical theatre – no mean feat for a fringe venue to attempt.

The space above the Highgate pub has been opened up marvellously in Racky Plew’s traverse staging which allows Martin Thomas’ free-flowing design to cleverly work in the limited space yet make it feel ideally suited to the purpose. But the main beneficiary of the staging is Lee Proud’s choreography which is outrageously daring (people in the front row are safe, but may flinch!) and breathtakingly executed with style and accuracy by the 12-strong ensemble, the tall drink of ginger ale that is Paul Bullion stood out most for me. From the striking opening routine to the iconic leaping dance of the dice-rolling men to the teasing turns from Miss Adelaide and her counterparts, this is pure quality across the board and incredible to see at such close quarters.

Performance-wise too, this is an ensemble who have worked extremely well to create carefully detailed characters so that even the smallest cameos have great impact. Anthony McGill’s kindly Abernathy gives a tenderly beautiful More I Cannot Wish You; Patrick Rufey’s always-eating Nicely Nicely nearly brings down the house leading a raucous Sit Down, You’re Rocking The Boat; and Connor Dowling steals every scene he is in as the mad-eyed, helium-voiced Officer Brannigan, a simply hilarious performance. Of the main performers, only Amy Bailey’s Sarah Brown showed a little reticence in the first half but soon warmed up and joined Jamie Sampson’s charismatic Sky, James Kermack’s hugely appealing Nathan and Rebecca Sutherland’s show-stopping Miss Adelaide in presenting hugely engaging and likeable leads.

The only tiny criticism that emerged from the evening was that a few too many minor slips crept in, fringe theatres can be quite unforgiving and so every little hiccup was exposed but nothing major and most, if not all, should be ironed out as the run progresses, making this a rather unmissable show. Delightfully daring and audaciously staged, this really is a piece of true Broadway magic in Highgate and oddly enough, feels like the perfect feel-good festive family show: recommended.