Lovelorn guys and dolls still hold the aces
Far be it from me to darken the festive mood, but one day soon someone will try to give us a genderneutral Guys and Dolls.
Let us, therefore, celebrate Frank Loesser’s classic musical about illegal gamblers in Depression-era New York while we still can.
However, we may have to accept some minor meddling such as in robert Hastie’s amiable production which tries to decaffeinate some of the show’s slightly un-PC razzmatazz. a lady next to me wryly observed that the show is cast in line with the silver-haired matinee audience. and it’s true, alex Young as our Salvation army heroine Sarah Brown is a little more ‘worldly’ than usual. That gives her more authority in her resistance to being taken to Cuba for a bet. It also means a little more pain in her song I’ll Know about finding Mr right. Even so, I did miss the wide-eyed idealism that normally makes her role shine.
Kadiff Kirwan, as our hero Sky Masterson, is a super-mellow, alpha gambler. any more laid-back and he’d need a chaise longue.
For me, he’s a little too assured in his leisurely wooing, but he catches fire well enough when it comes to his big number, Luck Be a Lady (soon I fear to be retitled Luck Be Non Binar). and he’s nicely contrasted by a notably grizzled Martin Marquez, who gives us as leathery a Nathan Detroit as I’ve seen.
Detroit is the gamblers’ fixer and Marquez imbues him with a wonderfully gravelly voice when he speaks and a touch of Bing Crosby when he sings.
His fiance Miss adelaide is not the ditzy bimbo of other stagings and Natalie Casey gives her real wallop and heft. You don’t so much laugh at her here as feel the mid-life heartache of her lament about how ‘a person can develop a cold’.
Janet Bird’s set is a Manhattan high-rise of iron girders with pipes and fire escapes to house the band, leaving an open stage with scaffolding walls on wheels and twin revolves for Matt Flint’s cheerful choreography.
This includes a hearty chorus of ‘real women’ for the nightclub striptease after the interval (a routine that looks first in line
for censors in any future inquisition).
But it was T.J. Lloyd as Nicely Nicely Johnson who caught my eye. He’s a pocket-size Pavarotti with a Butlins-beam who leads the company on the show’s greatest and most raucous number, Sit Down, You’re rockin’ The Boat. This one alone usually justifies the price of admission and once again doesn’t disappoint.
DAVID WALLIAMS’S children’s book Billionaire Boy could be mistaken for an autobiography. The Little Britain star-turned-roald Dahl emulator has sold more than 25 million books worldwide.
Even so, while I admire his Chaucerian storytelling with bottom gags and bolshie behaviour, I also find him coarse and clunky.
No matter, fans including my nine-year-old daughter are flocking to Neal Foster’s touring stage adaptation of Walliams’s story about a boy whose father is a ‘bog roll billionaire’.
Dad tops the UK rich list since patenting a revolutionary toilet tissue that’s moist on one side and dry on the other. The trouble for his son Joe is that he may get £100,000 a week in pocket money but he’s got no mates.
His answer is to leave his posh school where he’s bullied by bona fide toffs and try his luck at the local comp.
Matthew Gordon’s Joe strikes up a sweet friendship with fellow chubster Bob (Davy Bell). But the best character is Emma Matthews as dinner lady Mrs Traffe who serves gerbils on toast and jellyfish with custard.
Jason Furnival is a nice soft touch as Joe’s bling Brummie Dad who lands an impressive helicopter on a cartoon set of cardboard towers and loo roll pyramids. and Foster’s production is vigorously illustrated with satirical songs in a show that’s best for children between about five and ten.
Good seasonal wishes and all that to Walliams Inc., but our loo roll laureate is not for me.