The week in theatre: Guys and Dolls; Snowflake; The Wizard of Oz – review

Crucible, Sheffield; Kiln, London; Leeds PlayhouseRobert Hastie’s new Guys and Dolls is an instant classic, Mike Bartlett’s arguments are a slow burn, and for a thrilling trip to Oz, there is no place like LeedsEven in our disputatious world, most people can probably agree that 2019 has been a bumpy ride. Is anyone offering odds on 2020 being better? If they are, that’s not a bet I’d care to make. I am, however, prepared to lay 5-9 that Sheffield Crucible’s new production of Guys and Dolls will go down as a classic of its kind. Directed by the theatre’s artistic director, Robert Hastie, with new musical arrangements by Will Stuart and choreography by Matt Flint, this is a near-perfect presentation of the 1950 show that has been described as the “perfect musical comedy”, its winning combination being the stories of Damon Runyon, translated to stage by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling combined, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser.The action is located at a crossroads between vice and virtue. Janet Bird’s scaffold-style, mobile set evokes the sharp angles and fast pace of 1920s and 30s Broadway, where Martin Marquez’s fretting, furrow-browed, “no-good nick”, Nathan Detroit, is desperately seeking a venue for an illegal dice game. Meanwhile, nightclub singer Miss Adelaide longs for Nathan, her fiance of 14 years, to stop “stalling and stalling the wedding trip” and so cure her psychosomatic cold and “grippe”. Natalie Casey is a priceless Adelaide, switchbacking between pouting vamp and hilariously demented gerbil. Sister Sarah of the Save-a-Soul Mission walks the streets, looking for souls to save so as to save her mission. Alex Young’s Sarah has a sideways slide of the eye that suggests her laces are not as strait as might be supposed – an impression confirmed when she is introduced to Cuba, rum and fun by Kadiff Kirwan’s super-cool Sky Masterson, the gambler who, by winning a bet, loses his heart. Continue reading…
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