My annual outing to the Shaw Festival took me to 3 shows this year.
The first, Guys and Dolls, is one of my favourite musicals. After a friend said she didn't like it at all because of its sexism, I started to analyze exactly why I like this particular show so much.
There are three factors: the razor-sharp witty comebacks in the script, the clever patter-song style lyrics of several of the songs, and the absurdity of the relationship between Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide (engaged for 14 years, no less).
Like many Broadway shows, this one requires a romantic lead couple and a comic second couple. Unlike many shows, the second couple -- and especially Miss Adelaide -- can walk away with the entire show without too much trouble. That's a weakness of the book to a degree, but also shows where Frank Loesser put his best lyric-writing and composing gifts to work.
The Shaw's production of this treat, directed by Tadeusz Bradecki, was a good, solid show. Alas, it was so solid that it had trouble really lifting off. Everything was competent, professional, and slickly produced. But that didn't leave much room for inspiration to take wing -- with two exceptions.
I've really admired some of Kyle Blair's other performances, but here I felt he was miscast. He just looked and sounded far too much like Mr. Nice Guy to be really convincing as the king of the crap rollers, Sky Masterson. Elodie Gillett as Sarah Brown seemed stiff and unconvincing at first, but after she cut loose in the Havana scene (and she certainly did cut loose) she successfully made the transition from a "role" to a "person".
Shawn Wright as Nathan Detroit and Jenny L. Wright as Miss Adelaide proved my point about stealing the show by doing just that. Miss Adelaide in particular turned in as nearly perfect a take on this role as I would ever hope to see. Her Brooklyn accent was so thoroughly absorbed into her speaking that she even captured the little detail of "cold" becoming a two-syllable word -- "A poyson could develop a co-ahld" -- and stretched it out just enough that the second syllable took on an unmistakable life of its own. That classic song (Adelaide's Lament) was full of perfectly timed comic payoffs, as were all her scenes.
Miss Adelaide was one of the two examples of genius in the show. The other was the choreography of Parker Esse. His dance numbers owed little to any previous productions, but a great deal to careful study of the period. The dances were the one area where the show really caught fire. The Havana scene (as mentioned) was a swirling extravaganza of Latin dance that hovered just on the edge of mayhem without falling over. The Hot Box Club's girls exactly recaptured the flavour of the kind of nightclub dancing considered "naughty" back in the day (and looking very innocent now, to be sure). The Crapshooters' Dance was a rapid-fire number, bristling with tricky moves and fast position switches, that deservedly pulled down some hearty applause.
In sum: a show with some excellences, a great deal of good work, and nothing seriously wrong except that the whole show wasn't as good as the work of Miss Adelaide and the choregrapher.
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