Review: Guys and Dolls

Guys and DollsSavoy

This is the second consecutive Chichester-to-London transfer that has revealed a respected British actor to be superlatively suited to the great American musical. And they don't come much greater than Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls.

True, Sophie Thompson's beautifully observed reinvention of Miss Adelaide, the marriage-yearning burlesque dancer permanently suspended in a state of engagement by her commitment to phobic boyfriend Nathan Detroit, may not quite be the musical theatre milestone that defined Imelda Staunton's recent Momma Rose in Gypsy. But then Momma is a much bigger, more central role than Adelaide, one of four main protagonists.

But with the tragic realism of the perennially disappointed, Thompson overshadows even the central love story in this Damon Runyon-inspired world of gamblers and hustlers. She has none of the glamour that Vivian Blaine brought to the 1955 immortalised movie version opposite an equally beautiful Frank Sinatra. Instead, Thompson and David Haig as Detroit (Haig is a new addition to the cast since the Chichester opening) bring an ordinariness to their roles, albeit with extraordinary performances. Haig has something of Sergeant Bilko's likeable hustler about him. But it's Thompson's Adelaide who grounds American director Gordon Greenberg's slick, perfectly pitched and paced production with a completely believable human vulnerability. Much of the comedy is wrought from Thompson's command of vocal range - from shrill hysteria to a fathom of deep tragedy when, as happens often, she is deeply hurt - or "hoit" to use the New Yoik vernacular. The show also boasts the best rendition of Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat, perhaps the greatest show-stopper ever written, that I've yet heard. Led by Gavin Spokes's sinner-turned-born again evangelical Nicely- Nicely Johnson, it's not just that Spokes sings with a power and pitch that elevates this already high flying production into the stratosphere, but there is nuance too. When, in the song, Nicely-Nicely relates that section of his dream in which he is drowning and cries "someone save me", there rises out of Spoke's hitherto cynical sinner a hilariously camp panic.