Luck Be a Lady Tonight: Guys and Dolls at the New London Barn Playhouse

It’s a cliche to say that Guys and Dolls is a “perfect musical”. It’s a cliche because it is true. I have seen Guys and Dolls 6 or 7 times in various productions, and even when the production is not good, it doesn’t really matter because the show itself is so strong. There’s not one place-filler song, there’s not one dull moment. The dialogue is hilarious, the characters are memorable, and the score – good God, it’s one classic song after another. “Fugue for Tinhorns”, “Oldest Established”, “Adelaide’s Lament”, “Guys and Dolls”, “If I Were a Bell”, “I’ve Never Been In Love Before”, “Take Back Your Mink”, “Luck Be a Lady”, “Sue Me”, “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”. Are you kidding me? Based on stories by Damon Runyon, which describe a bustling criminalized New York City between the World Wars, Guys and Dolls first opened on Broadway in 1950 and ran for over 1,200 performances. Runyon wrote about hustlers and burlesque dancers and gamblers, and his language – archaic and profane – with a total lack of contractions – could be picked out in a dark alley. There’s a reason why “Runyonesque” is still a useful label.

The New London Barn Playhouse has been in existence for decades, and the 2011 summer season was their 79th season. A solid summer stock theatre, the Barn does 7 or 8 full plays a season, musicals, straight plays, comedies, reviews, and plays to packed houses all summer long. I love summer stock theatre. I have been going to productions at the Barn since I was a little girl. I am not sure what the first play I saw there was. Perhaps Brigadoon. I have a clear memory of seeing 1776 during the bicentennial year, and we were all so excited because Gerard Alessandrini (now famous for creating the juggernaut that is Forbidden Broadway) was an old family friend and he was playing John Adams. I still remember that show. I felt so important because I knew “Gerry”, up there in his Revolutionary-War garb. We shared a birthday! I felt famous! “I know him!” (and etc. Exeunt.) Going to see whatever was playing at the Barn during our time in the area became a family tradition. My cousins and I still remember some of the shows we saw there when we were pipsqueaks.

Going to the Barn as an adult is a nostalgic and powerful experience. It’s difficult to even SEE the damn show because walking into that beautiful tiny theatre, with its plush red curtain, makes my entire life flash before my eyes. Once upon a time, I sat in one of those seats and I was so little my feet didn’t touch the ground.

Going to see Guys and Dolls last week at The Barn was one of the highlights of our vacation. My only regret is that Mum, babysitting the little ones, couldn’t go. It was a packed house. We sat in the balcony. Jean and I had listened to “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” on the way to the theatre, laughing at how insane the sopranos get in that song, and Jean said, “I’m going to cry through the whole show.” You know when you well up at “Fugue for Tinhorns” you’re in for a long night.

There’s something wonderful about seeing something you already know so well. The repetition and the anticipation (I can’t wait for ‘Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat’, etc.) add to the experience. This is why we go to the theatre. This is what summer stock provides. To go and commune with Oklahoma or Forum or any of these other classic musicals, songs in the American lexicon, musicals that obviously withstand the test of time. You think, “Good lord, this is a good musical”. You reacquaint yourself with brilliance, with perfection. It’s heartening, especially in the current-day when the Broadway musical is in such a decline. They don’t make shows like Guys and Dolls now. It is an artifact of style. It is an example of “how we used to do this”. It WORKS.

Before I get to the GLORY that was the Robert Sella-directed Guys and Dolls in New London (a delight from beginning to end), let me talk about a couple of things that I have NOT liked in other productions of Guys and Dolls, common pitfalls. Yes, it’s meant to be kitschy. They are meant to be caricatures. I mean Harry the Horse? And Sarah the missionary lady beating her drum through the salacious streets? But if all you get is the kitsch, then you miss the great story, the involving story of two disparate couples trying to come together in a crazy cynical world. The whole thing needs the HOOK of those two plot-lines – gambler Sky Masterson and Salvation Army do-gooder Sarah Brown – and local gambling legend Nathan Detroit and his long-suffering Hot Box Girl girlfriend Adelaide. One of the strengths of the Nathan Lane 1992 revival at Lincoln Center was its reinvestment in the Nathan Detroit-Adelaide romance. Both of those characters can seem thin as paper in the wrong hands, and both Nathan Lane and Faith Prince brought new life to them. The same can’t be said for Peter Gallagher as Sky Masterson in the same production, with Josie de Guzman as Sarah. Now I am particularly partial here, so I admit my bias. My talented beautiful aunt, Regina O’Malley, was cast as Sarah Brown in the original production of the revival, which played in Seattle. But she was then replaced when the show moved to Broadway (something that happened to her more times than can be counted). My aunt has a killer soprano, mind-blowing, and is also hilarious and a terrific actress. Sky and Sarah in the 1992 revival were the side show to the Nathan Lane-Faith Prince plot-line, and it should be equal. Gallagher was fine, but not great, and de Guzman, while she has a beautiful voice, could not put over “If I Were a Bell” – a stumbling block for many Sarah Browns. Most actresses for the role seem to be cast for their ability to put over “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” or “I’ll Know” with its daunting high notes. It’s important that Sarah Brown has a soprano voice that can handle those notes. BUT. “If I Were a Bell” needs a blowsy belter, a campy Bette Midler raunchy energy, and the ability to blast out in her lower register. I wasn’t wacky about de Guzman’s “If I Were a Bell”, since her lower register couldn’t compete with what she could do in the high notes. It’s a hard part. You can’t just cast a sweet soprano – you also need an actress who can KILL with “If I Were a Bell”. It’s key! So the romance between Sky and Sarah in the 1992 revival didn’t have the pulse and throb of sexual electricity and chemistry (“Chemistry?” “Yeah, chemistry.”) that it needs. I love “If I Were a Bell” and usually it’s a painful experience to watch a soprano try to belt if she can’t do it.

So. These are my normal issues with most productions of Guys and Dolls although, like I said, the show is so perfect that pretty much nothing on earth could derail it completely.

But the New London Barn production fell into NONE of those pitfalls. The choreography (by Sarah Case and Keith Coughlin) was superb, really a PART of the Guys and Dolls world: not too dancey, but simple and character-motivated. Nothing worse than seeing “Luck Be a Lady” with a bunch of guys dressed up as gangsters pirouetting and jete-ing across the stage with the whiff of a Broadway dance studio about them. The choreography made sense, it looked like they were gamblers. The acting was incredible, even down to the bit parts. Everyone was working at such a high level. Even the phone conversation between a desperate Nathan Detroit (Jude McCormick) and Joey Biltmore, the garage-owner, which could seem like a placeholder, something there to further the plot along, became high comedy – especially with Michael Odokara-Okigbo’s frustrated enraged responses to Nathan Detroit’s pleading. It was hilarious!

All the minor gangsters -Benny Southstreet (Jason Moody), Rusty Charlie (Sam Bolen), Harry the Horse (Andrew Miller) – seemed to be channeling vaudeville routines, in their body language and interactions. This was a very talented cast, but it also takes a really good and specific director to contextualize all of this for actors. Each person had his own journey going on on that stage, no matter how small the role, and if you honed in on just one of them, you could track it. My college acting chairman directed a huge musical every year, with 50 people onstage at one time. But she worked those shows as though they were a Chekhovian ensemble piece – where the maid is as important as the grumpy uncle or the female lead. Even if you were in the ensemble, you felt so vital to the whole thing working. You worked your character, you brought little bits into your scenes, you were as specific as you could be – the ensemble never felt like a faceless mass in her productions. The same is true with the Guys and Dolls I just saw, and this is a testament to the actors, of course: brilliant performers who were always alive and present onstage, even if they were not the lead. But it is also a testament to the direction. Benny Southstreet is a very specific individual, dumb as a box of rocks, a moron essentially – and you totally got that from Moody’s performance.

Alex Syiek played Sky Masterson, and he was perfect: smooth and unreliable, but finally succumbing to his first experience of love, which made him go a little bit insane. For the first time, Sky Masterson is out of his element. When he and Kennedy Caughill (who played Sarah Brown – more on her in a minute – she is key!) stood facing one another, singing “I’ve Never Been In Love Before” – Syiek found a way to make those lyrics real for himself. I truly believed that HE believed what he was saying. It’s not just a pretty song, one we all know. You can go on autopilot with shows like this, and not even realizing you’re doing it. Syiek did a couple hand gestures, subtle, while he was singing – which showed how baffled he was – how at sea he was, almost scared … It felt more like a monologue than a song. It was a confession. Beautifully done. But he also got the skeezy side of Sky, the guy willing to take a gal to Havana just because he won a bet. He was funny, and also managed to make Sky Masterson poignant, not an easy job.

Kennedy Caughill, a beautiful fresh-faced redhead, was so wonderful as Sarah Brown that yes, I found myself in tears almost constantly. This should not come as a surprise. I cry all the time. But she brought a spunky quality to Sarah, and she also NAILED “If I Were a Bell”. The audience was howling with laughter as she let her hair down during that song. The contrast between her in that song and her as the Picture of Rectitude in the rest of the play was what was so funny, so gorgeous: This is her falling in love for the first time. On the line, “If I were a salad, I know I’d be splashing my dressing”, she carelessly and drunkenly unbuttoned the top button of her dress – in a very funny gesture that seemed unconscious and free – but it was a smart choice. She’s ready to whip her “dressing” off because of Sky Masterson! Her soprano voice was so sweet and clear that it brought an ache to my heart – no pushing, no theatrics – just a lovely clear voice, emotional and true. But she has a belt too, which she used to great effect during “If I Were a Bell”. This Sarah Brown was not in the background, upstaged by the more openly theatrical Nathan and Adelaide. She was a legitimate lead of the production, and it was great to see.

Serena Brook, a regular at the Barn, played Adelaide, and she reminded me of Lucille Ball. The Faith Prince rendition of Adelaide’s songs from the 1992 revival are so fantastic, so perfect, that she provides some pretty big shoes to fill. But Brook made it her own. She was gangly and goofy, sweet and manipulative, angry and shrieking, on the verge of tears, sneezing gustily, and then coy and cunning during “Marry the Man Today”. And Jude McCormick, as the ridiculously trapped and frightened Nathan Detroit, avoiding matrimony for 14 years although he doesn’t want to ditch Adelaide and get another “doll”, was a great foil for Brook. Their scenes together were hysterical. You knew they belonged together, you understood his predicament, but you understood hers, too. This couple will be having the same fight for the rest of their lives.

Edward Joy played Nicely-Nicely Johnson, he who opens the show with “Fugue for Tinhorns” and then leads the show-stopping second act number “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”. When he first walked on, I held my breath – knowing he would have to carry “Sit Down” … would he have the voice? With the first note, the first gesture, his entire behavior during “Fugue for Tinhorns” – I relaxed totally. Great voice, great presence, and totally in tune with every possible comedic moment. He was Siobhan’s favorite. I could tell that during crowd scenes she was watching him, because he’d do something and Siobhan would burst out laughing, often the only one in the audience to do so. That was what was so fun about this production. There was so much to look at on the stage at any given time, and everyone was doing such hilarious things – minor gangsters, the other Salvation Army ladies, the Hot Box Girls … that you couldn’t take it all in. Who do I follow? Who do I look at?? “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” was so exhilarating, so INSANE, that I think we all laughed from start to finish. The whole audience was out of control. The song starts slowly, almost pensively – Nicely-Nicely just sharing a dream he had. But then, things start to heat up, more and more people get swept away, and by the end, one of the prissy uptight Salvation Army ladies found herself standing on the damn desk, gyrating and clapping her hands as though she were suddenly a Hot Box Girl, only filled with the Spirit. We were all dying, and saying, “Oh my God, look at Benny Southstreet” or “LOOK AT THAT SALVATION ARMY LADY”. The second it was over, the audience erupted into applause, and Jean, sitting next to me, moaned in agony, “I want to see it again!!!!”

Hearing Cashel’s guffaws of laughter was also awesome. The show works for adults and it works for 13 year old boys.

It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t mention Carl Herzog, who plays “Big Jule”, the tough gangster in from Chicago to join the “oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York”. He became an O’Malley favorite. We could not get over him. By the end of the show, it felt to me like Big Jule was the star of the whole thing. His participation in the first act is limited to a couple of lines: “I want to shoot craps” – he keeps saying that like a refrain. Carl Herzog, a young man, a college student, is a Star in the making. His performance was so outrageously funny that I’m still thinking about it. He was a smileless ominous presence, his voice was gruff and STUPID – you knew this guy only had the words “I want to shoot craps” in his vocabulary – but during “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”, Big Jule had this insanely funny transformation. “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” starts as a goof. The gangsters show up under duress, and they’re there under protest, one eye on the clock. Nicely-Nicely starts to describe his bullshit dream about he was on the “boat to heaven”, and the gangsters remain gangsters at first, sullen and pouting. But as the song continues, as the energy starts to intensify, things start to get nuts. Now it’s written that way, it’s a huge production number, but what was so hilarious about the Barn’s production was that it really played as though the Holy Spirit entered that mission, it played as though all of them, en masse, actually converted. Especially Big Jule. To see that scowling gangster throwing his hands up into the air, shouting, “SIT DOWN SIT DOWN SIT DOWN YOU’RE ROCKIN’ THE BOAT” was high comedy. (In the clip above, during the “Sit Down” section, you can see Carl Herzog: he’s sitting on the front bench over to the right hand side, wearing a red shirt.) At the end of the song, there was a subtle moment where he eyed the Salvation Army Lady rockin’ out on the desk, and you could see that love had blossomed in that moment. To say that this was funny is to understate how well it worked. He gives her the eye, and she notices him giving her the eye, and in the final scene, as both lead couples are about to get married – the two of them were standing together, him upright and proud at the gorgeous dame on his arm (she in her Salvation Army uniform), and she giggly and nervous, taking off her glasses. These were minor bits, not even highlighted in any way – but we, the O’Malleys, were so obsessed with Big Jule that we could not take our eyes off of him, and caught every moment. Brendan was in tears of laughter afterwards saying, “His face at the end … he was like, ‘This is my girl …'”

Big Jule is a bit part. He doesn’t have his own song. He only has a few lines. He’s very important, but he doesn’t have much to do. Robert Sella highlighted him as much as he could, and Carl Herzog was fantastic in running with it. Brendan murmured to me, “That kid won’t be doing summer stock for long.”

Indeed.

While it became The Big Jule Show for us, especially after “Sit Down”, the entire cast was phenomenal, and we had the best time, up in our back row in the balcony. We were noisy, appreciative, and out of control. I would glance over at Jean during “Luck Be a Lady” and see her in tears. Siobhan would randomly guffaw into the silence because she was following Nicely-Nicely during a crowd scene. Cashel and Brendan were doubled over in their seats, howling. Guys and Dolls always works. It’s perfect, after all. But the New London Barn Playhouse didn’t take it for granted that “this is a hit show, it will fill the seats, and hey, it’s easy, because it’s Guys and Dolls and it’s perfect and it always works”.

The New London Barn Playhouse production showed us WHY it works.