Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser. Free-Rain Theatre Company directed by Anne Somes, music directed by Lucy Bermingham, choreography by Annette Sharpe. Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, February 13-28. Bookings: 6298 0290.
As Sky Masterson tells Sarah, it's all about chemistry. Yes, indeed. Despite each of the elements working well enough in their own terms - excellent singing, good orchestra, neat choreography, symbolic backdrop, great costumes, reasonable lighting - there was not much fizz in the reactions, especially in the first half on opening night.
Georgia Pike stood out as Miss Adelaide because she knew how to play out to the auditorium and respond to the audience's reactions. Sarah Darnley-Stuart as the the missionary Sarah Brown was almost as strong, and for me the highlight of the whole show was their duet Marry the Man Today, which brings the story to a conclusion after "umpteen" years.
So what was missing? Guys and Dolls, and the Damon Runyon stories the play is derived from, is a weirdly whimsical approach to what people nowadays like to call the underbelly of city life. It trivialises reality with romance.
Runyon's The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown was written in 1933, the year Hitler gained power. Perhaps escapism was needed then in the face of criminality and looming dictatorship, and still had its place in this 1950 musical as the Cold War and McCarthyism took hold. Today, I think, Guys and Dolls needs a cartoon style much more delineated than Somes achieved in this production, to break out of the 1950s mould.
I felt too much of this show was imitative rather than newly created, and that was why the chemicals just bubbled along rather than exploding as they should. Sinatra, now known as the apologist for the Mafia, is not here any longer to flash his blue eyes in apparent innocence. We call everyone "guys" now, there are no "dolls", and soppy men are not dragged into marriage by desperate women. Find a modern purpose for playing Guys and Dolls with a new view of its old-time attitudes, and then there will be real chemistry.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment