Guys and Dolls is a winner for ATC

The Audi Season of Guys and Dolls by Jo Swerling & Abe Burrows, Music & Lyrics by Frank Loesser
Directed by Raymond Hawthorne
Auckland Theatre Company
Q Theatre
Until December 5

If the response by the audience on opening night is anything to go on then ATC have got another winner with their end of year production of Guys and |Dolls. Every song, every joke, every clever bit of acting was met with delight, laughter and applause.

Gambler Nathan Detroit (Roy Snow) needs $1,000 rent in order to hold a craps game. He bets Sky Masterson (Shane Cortese) that Sky can’t get urban missionary Sister Sarah Brown (Rachel O’Connell) to go on a date. Sky admits he is a sinner and cons a date with her on the promise of bringing more sinners to the mission. Meanwhile, Nathan's fiancee of twelve years, Adelaide (Sophie Hawthorne) wants him to give up his gambling ways and marry her.

Guys and Dolls is one of the older musicals, written in the 1950’s but it still manages to hold an audience. It has some good solid plot lines which the audience can follow, jokes which are relevant and a bunch of, witty, toe tapping songs.

It’s also a classy production with stylish costumes by Tracy Grant Lord although the sets, even though they are individually clever, don’t manage to provide the right atmosphere.

The dancing is particularly animated, including a session at the Havana cafe and the cabaret act at the Hot Box Club. There are also some stand-out performances, notably Sophie Hawthorne and Shane Cortese.

Hawthorne as Adelaide gives the role a fine mixture of brashness and conventionality, delivering her songs brilliantly. As Nathan’s long suffering fiancee she gets to make the occasional pithy remark: “I sort of like when you forget to give me presents. It makes me feel like we’re married.”

Cortese creates a clever cartoon-like character of a petty crim on the make, with shifty eyes and shifty manner.

One of the great pleasures of the production is the way in which the band moderates its playing and the voices come across with a clarity which many of the musicals in the past have failed to do.