Based on the story and characters by Damon Runyon
Music and Lyrics byFrank Loesser
Directed by Nicholas Hyntner
Choreographer: Arlene Phillips with James Cousins
Set and costume design: Bunny Christie
Musical supervisor and arranger Tom Brady
Lighting design – Paule Constable
Sound designer – Paul Arditti
Associate Director – James Cousins
Assistant Director – Lily Dyble
The Bridge Theatre, London
Friday 31st March 2023, 19.30
CAST
Simon Anthony- Brandy Bottle Bates / Calvin
Lydia Bannister- Agatha
Kathryn Barnes – Anne / Swing
Callum Bell- Jack O’Hearts / Swing
Cindy Belliot – Billy Perry
Jordan Castle- Harry The Horse
Cornelius Clarke – Lieutenant Brannigan
Doris Clare- Petrelle Dias
Ike Fallon – Little Isadore
Leslie Garcia Bowman – Handsome Jack Fogerty
George Ionnides – Dave the Dude
Cameron Johnson – Big Jule
Daniel Mays – Nathan Detroit
Robbie McMillan – Society Max
Cedric Neal- Nicely-Nicely Johnson
Perry O’Dea – Angie The Ox
Anthony O’Donnell- Arvide Abernathy
Mark Oxtoby- Benny Southsteeet
Andrew Richardson – Sky Masterson
Ryan Pidgen – Rusty Charlie
Celinde Schoenmaker- Sarah Brown
Charlotte Scott- Elizabeth / Assistant Dance captain
Katy Secombe- General Cartwright / Good Time Charley Bernstein
Tinovimbanashe Sibanda – Martha
Isabel Snaas – Mimi Muldoon
Marisha Wallace – Miss Adelaide
Sasha Wareham – Kitty Clancy
Dale White- Knife O’Hallran / Dance Captain
The very best thing we’ve seen since I started this site was Nicholas Hyntner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Bridge. We went twice and this is using the same immersive concept- people standing and milling around in the pit and stages rising and descending among them. You can sit, as we did, in the surrounding galleries on all four sides. Same director, choreographer and designer too! The logistics of moving audience, cast and props are incredible, a stage sinks with twelve seats on, seconds later they’re gone and it rises empty. Stages rise and fall and the necessary ushers moving the crowd are dressed as New York cops. Then there are stagehands in black with headphones to move props, The ushers and stagehands must require a great deal of meticulous rehearsal. Moving steps into place, moving the crowd back before stages rise where people had been seconds before. I would say they had refined and extended the logistics of the raising and lowering stages in the time since A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It takes a lot of people to operate it, as well as the very large cast.
We were seated near the entrances in what would have been the area facing the stage when it is set up as a proscenium theatre, but here it’s totally in the round, and the large orchestra was above our heads, so in a way the theatre was round the opposite way. There must be hidden entrances because the large cast appear from all angles. It is fluent.
I’m not that familiar with the songs. Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat was a staple of my childhood though, and Luck Be A lady Tonight was a major BBC Light Programme favourite. We saw a production of Guys and Dolls in London, probably 1970s, but my memory had faded so that it was all fresh. On language, it interests me that ‘guys’ has become unisex and much wider than the male ‘wise guys’ in the plot, while ‘doll’ lasted through baby-doll pyjamas and dolly-bird in the mid-60s, but has now virtually gone out of use. Will this bring it back?
The four principals are Nathan Detroit (Daniel Mays) who runs illegal crap shooting (dice) games. He has been engaged for fourteen years to night club singer Miss Adelaide (Marisha Wallace). Sky Masterton (Andrew Richardson) is a big time gambler. He has a bet with Nathan that Sky can get a ‘doll’ to go to Havana with him. The target doll is Sarah Brown (Celinde Schoenmaker), a Save-A- Soul (Salvation Army) missionary.
Daniel Mays and Marisha Wallace
Celinde Schoenmaker and Andrew Richardson
As so often with musicals, Daniel Mays is the central comic character, the other three are major singers. Though all four can and do act, sing, and dance, leaving us marvelling again at the all round ability of the cast in musical theatre. They do get to Cuba and Sarah gets gloriously drunk on Bacardi. The Save-A-Soul; mission is facing closure, and Sky promises to get twelve sinners to attend a prayer meeting to help Sarah. The sinners are the gamblers. A word for Cameron Johnson’s Big Jule, a gangster from Chicago. He is huge, looks like seven feet tall to me. With an equally huge deep voice he enhanced the role.
We heard someone say, ‘Don’t miss the second ten minutes of the interval’ and they were right because we had a Barber Shop quartet performing their versions of songs from the first half. The audience were invited to sit on tables on the stages for this and stayed on for Miss Adelaide’s major opening number for the second part.
Miss Adelaide and her female dance troupe are gloriously non-PC, true to the musical which dates from 1950. Quentin Letts in the Sunday Times said it was shamelessly sexy, and loved it. Us too. They covered all bases there with the male dancers in Cuba as if they were in a gay bar hitting on Sky. Arlene Phillips can do that kind of great choreography.
It’s also very funny, never more so when Big Jule shoots craps with dice with dots only he can see. Daniel Mays is a master comedian anyway, and ‘Spiv’ was a speciality when he played Private Walker in the film version of Dad’s Army with Toby Jones.
Both Miss Adelaide and Sarah have big solo songs, and it culminates in them duetting on ‘Marry The Man Today.’ They are both great singers with totally different styles which makes the duet SO good.
Cedric Neal could have reprised Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat all night. It’s sung at the Mission, and by shifting chairs every quadrant of the theatre got a full on view for part of it. Superb direction and choreography and that’s as well as any song has ever gone down with an audience for me. The set up allows for audience reaction to be vocal, so people can join in on crowd stuff. Cedric Neal knew he had us in the palm of his hand and went for it.
It’s five stars in every single aspect. Last summer we thought Crazy For You at Chichester was the best musical we’d ever seen. Both have perfect casting. Technically, given the theatre’s abilities, Guys and Dolls is even better, though Gershwin might just win on the fame of the songs, because they were curated from several different older musicals. Both are state of the art in arrangement, choreography, singing, acting. This one has the better jokes and plot because Crazy For You deliberately uses musical cliches, and this is quite different.
The Bridge is without question the technically best theatre in the country. However, I was right the first time I went there when I said heavy rain would be an issue because the nearest road must be 300 yards away. It was near torrential rain when we walked there.
There are productions which transcend star ratings, ones where for years to come, you’ll think back ‘Wow. I was there!’ This is one of them.
At the end, the Cuban music starts up and the cast join the audience in dancing (as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)
*****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
I list the critics every time. There are reviewers here who rarely concur, united on five stars.
Five star
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times *****
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph *****
The Observer *****
Nick Curtis, The Standard *****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out *****
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage *****
Helen Hawkins, The Arts Desk, *****
Metro, *****
Four star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ****
Isobel Lewis, The Independent ****
Fiona Mountford The i, ****
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
NICHOLAS HYNTNER (director)
One Man Two Guv’nors, 2012
Timon of Athens, National Theatre, 2012
Othello, National Theatre, 2013
Hamlet, National Theatre, 2010
People, by Alan Bennett, National Theatre on tour 2013
Young Marx, by Richard Bean & Clive Coleman, Bridge Theatre 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge 2019
John Gabriel Borkman, Bridge 2022
The Southbury Child, by Stephen Beresford, Chichester 2022
DANIEL MAYS
The Caretaker, Old Vic 2016
Mojo by Jez Butterworth, 2014
Dad’s Army (film review)
Made in Dagenham (film review)
1917 (film review)
Peter Viney's Blog 
Leave a Reply