Guys and Dolls

As the curtains opened the audience were greeted with their first view of the staging for this production of Guys and Dolls. The sliding set was superb with illuminated signs hanging above the stage making full use of this large area.

The costumes and wigs looked really effective and definitely worked well for the era the production is set in. All the ‘guys’ looked great in their gangster outfits and the ‘dolls’ of the hotbox, also, looked very impressive. The choreography by Aaron Gibson was incredibly polished and very snappy which gave the whole production a real lift. Stand out moments had to be the choreography of Miss Adelaide and her Hot Box girls and ‘Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat’. The orchestra under the musical direction of David Easto played well and accompanied the singers beautifully.

A big stand out moment in this production was the fun way in which the company dealt with the overture; this can often be a little boring as there is usually not much to watch. However, this production made the overture into an extra scene with a significant amount of the cast (if not all) involved in little scenarios. These were all choreographed to the music and all told fun little stories about the characters that were being portrayed and it seemed all the characters interacted in each other’s stories. This was a lovely start to the show and gave the chorus members extra to do. 

Stephen Duckham must have been thanking his lucky stars when he cast this show. James Gordanifar was charismatic and suitably aloof in his main role as Sky Masterson and produced a very strong performance, winning the hearts of both Sarah Brown and the audience. Sarah was played by Annabel Pilcher who had a lovely singing voice and sang really well with James, she also paired well with Chris Loughran who was perfectly cast as Arvide Abernathy and you easily believed that he had fatherly affection for Sarah. Pat Pryce was very charismatic and watchable as Nathan Detroit and, like James, effortlessly had the audience behind him. Jo Smith as Miss Adelaide was exceptionally good and definitely one of the star performances of the night. Her singing voice was perfect for the role and she kept her accent brilliantly throughout all her songs which she sang with great characterisation, energy and humour, especially ‘Sue Me’ which was absolutely hilarious. If Jo was one of the star performers then another had to be Alex Broadfield as ‘Nicely Nicely Johnson’, Alex, like Jo, found a lot of humour in his characterisation and brought a lot of heart to his role. His singing voice was lovely as was shown in the number ‘Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat’. Also outstanding was Michelle Worthington as General Cartwright who really looked like she enjoying herself. Although I have highlighted only a few of the main principles everyone contributed really well and made this a great show with some fabulous moments. 

Huge congratulations to Stephen and the rest of the team for pulling together a very enjoyable show.

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