Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls’ is musical based on short stories by Damon Runyon the most well known being ‘The Idylls of Miss Sarah Brown’. It brings the fabled characters of 1940’s New York together in a popular and well known musical.

Portishead Players obviously had  limited resources when choosing the cast for Guys and Dolls and I would question their judgment after auditions, in continuing with such a male dominated show. With a cast of 27 (taken from the programme) only nine or ten  were male, and if you take out the principal roles of Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit, Nicely Nicely, LT Brannigan and Arvide Abernathy that only left 4/5 males to cover the other roles and company. The decision to use women, dressed as men with brown makeup on their chins to denote beard growth, was unusual in modern amateur theatre, and personally it didn’t work for me, even though the ladies worked extremely hard!

The score of the show is loud and brassy and  the club compromise of a piano, bass and drums combo although tuneful, was disappointing. The lack of brass and beat and tempo meant all the music lacked oomph!

However the club presented a colourful and well paced show which pleased the large audience.

There were some very good performances among the principals…Newcomers to both the stage and Portishead Players Mark Mitchell (Sky Masterson) and Chris Gribble (Nathan Detroit) will be excellent additions to forthcoming productions. Given time and experience they will understand about timing and pauses when delivering humour. That aside, they both had good and tuneful singing voices, clear delivery and diction and good stage presence, very well done on your introduction to this talented club.

Lizz Gillam played (Sarah Brown) as a very forthright and commanding Sarah Brown. Lizz has an excellent operatic mezzo voice with good tone and powerful volume… too loud for some parts of Sarah’s gentlewoman character, more light and shade was required as it quite overpowered the gentle baritone of Sky.

Verity Huntley… born to play ‘Miss Adelaide’.  A lovely controlled performance with fun, comedy and understanding, beautifully performed.

Both Norman Allen and Ben Salter presented good characters and performances as Arvide Abernathy and Nicely Nicely, and both sang very well.

This was a ‘Curates Egg of a production’…  good in parts.

Well done to Director Caroline Astley and Producer Janet Astley for pulling together a compact version of Guys and Dolls which the audience obviously enjoyed. It was quite a feat to rehearse this show in 8 weeks. 

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