REVIEW: Snappy, well-cast 'Guys and Dolls' a smart start to Moonlight's summer season

By FRANKIE MORAN - For the North County Times | Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:43 PM PDT ∞

The Moonlight Amphitheatre stage fills with the tourists, starlets, sailors, thieves, drunks and bobby-soxers that inhabit Damon Runyon's Times Square, and right from the start, it's clear this "Guys and Dolls" is in good hands.

Director and choreographer John Vaughan's solidly traditional staging may not break much new ground, but it skillfully evokes the time and place ----- not to mention the light-hearted feel ----- of the 1950 classic about the games and dames of a group of New York gangsters.

Vaughan's Runyonland prologue, which has the various guys and dolls of midtown Manhattan busily scurrying about the expansive stage to the tune of an 18-piece orchestra conducted by Kenneth Gammie, sets the tone for an enjoyable evening, and for a strong opening to Moonlight's 28th summer season.

It's the second professional "Guys and Dolls" to go up locally this year, coming on the heels of San Diego Musical Theatre's January production in El Cajon. But though the two share a set design by Ed Gallagher, Vaughan trades in the wintry approach of the prior production for a sunnier, altogether cheerier quality that serves Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows' slick-talking book well.

The 25-member cast is led by a well-matched pair of couples. Moonlight first-timer David S. Humphrey captures the easygoing charm of suave gambler Sky Masterson, and Beth Obregon, in a role too often shrill and dour, is a demure but appealing Sarah Brown whose warm, golden tones turn "I'll Know" into a honey-drizzled Automat delight.

The criminally versatile Lance Arthur Smith returns to the musical stage making his company debut as Nathan Detroit, finding the heartfelt honesty in the outsized comedy of "Sue Me." And going toe-to-toe with him as Adelaide, Nathan's ailment-afflicted fiancee of 14 years, Tracy Lore is a sexy, brassy performer whose showy costumes (coordinated by Ambra Wakefield) accentuate all the right places for the era of late burlesque.

As the older-but-wiser characters, Ralph Johnson is Sarah's gentle Irish father, Arvide, and Susan E.V. Boland is a wide-eyed, daffy General Cartwright.

The gravel-voiced Michael Hill is a crusty, if not massively imposing, Big Jule, and Jeffrey Scott Parsons is memorable as horse-betting Rusty Charlie. Ted Leib is always on their tail as N.Y.P.D. Lt. Brannigan.

James M. Gruessing Jr., is a traditionally big and big-voiced Nicely-Nicely, leading the company in "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," and David Beaver plays second banana Benny Southstreet with a hard-driving flair that serves the pair well in the title song. Add Brett Daniels as Harry the Horse and you have a talented trio of dice men.

But what these three are doing sashaying through Vaughan's staging of "The Crapshooters' Dance" is unclear. For the first 90 minutes of the show, Vaughan's choreography is spot-on: Cutesy in the movements of Adelaide and the Hot Box Girls, plot-propelling in the Havana sequence. The six male dancers who perform the bulk of the crapshooters' subterranean ballet are capable of the leaps and tricks reminiscent of Michael Kidd's athletic original choreography, but the sense of risk ---- of danger, even ---- that these characters must feel isn't evident; they're no more menacing than the fleet-flooted chorus boys dancing through the streets of the 1961 "West Side Story" film. The subsequent "Luck Be a Lady," though smoothly sung by Humphrey, is similarly unfocused.

Opening night's sound quality, on the other hand, could not have been any more clear, thanks to the lucid design (by Chris Luessmann) that spotlighted the lush moving harmonies of "The Oldest Established" (tight musical direction by Elan McMahan).

That same set is back (provided by Fullerton Civic Light Opera), and with it some confusion about the year in which "Guys and Dolls" actually takes place. Frank Loesser's show opened in 1950. Gallagher's set design includes a backdrop with a painted poster advertising Arthur Miller's "new" play, "A View from the Bridge," which opened in the fall of 1955. Moving the action up a few years to 1955 wouldn't be all that problematic were it not for several clues in Loesser's lyrics, most glaringly one in Adelaide and Sarah's 11 o'clock charmer, "Marry the Man Today": "At Wanamaker's and Saks and Klein's a lesson I've been taught/You can't get alterations on a dress you haven't bought."

Saks may still be selling dresses there on Fifth Avenue, but sadly, Wanamaker's closed up shop in New York City in 1954.

Vaughan seems to have made a few cuts to tighten the lengthy book, and has tried here and there to make some of the dialogue more easily understood by a West Coast audience in 2008. Still, these characters would probably never have referred to "Public School 84," when all over the city (and in Swerling and Burrows' book) it's known simply as "P.S. 84."

With that in mind, I almost wish the program had included a glossary of all the various period- and place-specific references in the witty lyrics and dialogue. Let's face it: the punchline of Adelaide's very funny "Lament" is lost if you don't know why longtime fiance Nathan makes them get off the Niagara-bound train every year at Saratoga (Hint: The town is home to a famous racetrack).

Local audiences may want to liken it to thinking you're bound for a Coronado honeymoon and getting out instead at the Del Mar racetrack. Somehow, though, the magic is lost when the trip you're taking is a $5-a-gallon, gas-guzzling one down the I-5.

In this era of re-imagined, high-concept musical revivals, it sure is nice that Moonlight, Vaughan, and company haven't tinkered too much with this often-dated but entertaining classic.

"Guys and Dolls"

When: 8 p.m. July 16-20 (gates open at 6:30 p.m.)

Where: Moonlight Amphitheatre, Brengle Terrace Park, 1200 Vale Terrace Drive, Vista

Tickets: $22-$39

Phone: (760) 724-2110

Web: www.moonlightstage.com

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