Review: Guys and Dolls at Joseph Rowntree Theatre

“…filled with heart, style and bigger-than-life musical numbers…”

Guys and Dolls by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, Joseph Rowntree Theatre

By Sean Sable

I’m not sure if I first heard it as part of an advert, or if I downloaded it straight from the collective unconscious, but I feel fairly certain that “Luck Be a Lady” was the first musical theatre song I knew any of the words to. By the time I was born in the cough cough seventies, Guys and Dolls had been around so long it was practically in the cultural water supply. My seven-year-old self had no idea what the words “the oldest established floating crap game in New York” meant, but I knew the tune, and my primary school Summer Spectacular Musical Revue (a show I am sure scintillated the hundreds of parents crammed into a muggy sports hall in June) included a jazzy rendition of “A Bushel and a Peck” complete with choreography. Yet last night at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre was the first time I actually sat down and had the pleasure of watching the songs come straight from the source. And what a source it is.

Before I can get into last night’s charming performance, I want to take a moment to talk about the producing theatre itself, as its long tradition of serving community theatre in York is part of what makes performances like this so special. Born from the Rowntree family’s philanthropic legacy, the Joseph Rowntree Theatre has stood since 1935, when it was built by the Rowntree family so the workers at their chocolate factory would have somewhere to sing. Today, it is a volunteer-run charity that can easily be described as the beating heart of York’s thriving cultural scene. If you got your start in theatre in or around York, there is a near certainty that your experience intersected with the JRT, and its legacy is what keeps amateur theatre performances, such as last night’s Guys and Dolls and York Light Opera Company’s recent Die Fledermaus, among the best tickets in town. For the last eight years, the theatre has staged fundraiser musicals in February, but this year it has added a summer slot and, with Guys and Dolls, rolled the dice to winning effect.

If Family Fortunes asked the question, “What is the quintessential golden-age musical?”, Guys and Dolls would surely be at the top of the board. Frank Loesser’s score and the book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows have been doing the rounds since 1950, when the show opened on Broadway before going on to win the Tony for Best Musical the following year. Built from Damon Runyon’s short stories about Broadway gamblers and grifters, and spoken in an invented slang that feels like New York’s own Cockney, the story follows Nathan Detroit, organiser of the oldest established floating crap game in New York. Desperate for money to secure a venue, Nathan bets fellow gambler Sky Masterson that he can’t take the buttoned-up mission worker Sarah Brown to Havana for a romantic night on the town. Sky takes the bet, falls for her properly, and finds himself reconsidering who he actually wants to be, while Nathan spends the entire show dodging marriage to his long-suffering fiancée, nightclub singer Miss Adelaide.

And what is a musical without absolutely stellar music? You can imagine how thrilled I was to walk in and find that we were going to be treated to a ten-piece ensemble under musical director Jess Viner. Though small, their sound was mighty, with enough brass and woodwind to fill Havana and strings sweet enough to make Sarah’s bright soprano feel feathery and light. It was a genuine pleasure to hear live music behind a production of this scale, and it made the New York nights feel a little more alive, and the nightclub scenes feel that much jazzier.

The entire cast gave rousing performances, with the principal players showing real talent, particularly in their well-honed vintage New York accents and stock Runyonese cadences. Kit Stroud’s Nathan Detroit had a smarmy charm that was both lovable and slappable in the same breath. Jennifer Jones’s Miss Adelaide channelled a whoily-twoily Olive Oyl that would have Popeye seeing hearts. But the best American accent of the night went to Rebecca Jackson’s Sarah Brown. Either she is from North America or someone on the West End should snap her up and ask her to teach a few of their performers. Callum Mathers gave Sky Masterson a pomaded, cool-cat smoothness, and one of my absolute favourites of the night was Caitlin McDowell’s gender-flipped Big Jule. The amount of menace she managed to muster in just a few minutes made me feel as if I should empty my pockets and run. When she gave her “testimony” at the mission in the last act, I was absolutely in stitches.

The production has a large and effervescent ensemble that brings real scale and energy to the performance. Director Kathryn Lay has clearly built this production around the full company rather than parking a chorus behind her leads, and it shows. The choreography was sharp and perfectly counted, and every face on the stage had the kind of spark that would make you believe they were standing in the centre of the spotlight. My top musical nod belongs to Adam Gill’s Nicely-Nicely Johnson, with my favourite performance of the night: “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.” He had sunny charisma and a twinkle in his eye as the whole ensemble clapped and stamped through the mission hall, and the audience couldn’t help but get involved with a few claps themselves. Apart from his energetic stage shenanigans, his voice was just fabulous: a warm, resonant sound that maintained control, no matter how large it got.

The technical work was well considered for the scale of the show, with pared-down staging that always felt like enough to anchor us without being so much that it stretched at the seams. The costumes were a real highlight, with dozens of changes, particularly for Miss Adelaide and her Hot Box companions. My favourites were the red-and-blue sequinned numbers, which flashed away into little silvery two-piece sets that looked like dancing glitter. What fun it must have been for the performers to hear the way the audience gasped at the reveal. In Havana, the dancers wore fluttery rumba skirts in a riot of colours. It was this kind of clever costuming that allowed scenes to change with very little need to touch a piece of scenery.

Guys and Dolls at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre is a jazzy dip into a bygone era, filled with heart, style and bigger-than-life musical numbers. Get yourself a ticket before Big Jule starts cracking knuckles and taking names.

Guys and Dolls plays at Joseph Rowntree Theatre until Saturday 11 July. Tickets are available here.

Sean Sable is a Yorkshire-based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk