Wise Guys

Maine State Music Theater opens with a classic

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Guys and Dolls plays at the Maine State Music Theater in Brunswick, at Bowdoin’s Pickard Theater, through June 23. Call (207) 725-8769 for ticket information.

GUY AND DOLL: Nathan Detroit (Ed Romanoff) and Miss Adelaide (Beth Norton).

There can’t be many high school drama programs in the country that have not done a production of Guys and Dolls. One of the classic musicals, it has become so ingrained in American culture that, even if you have avoided it thus far, I can guarantee you’ve heard versions of a few of the songs, like “Luck Be a Lady” or “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.”

In taking on such a cultural icon, Maine State Music Theater revisits history. MSMT can bet that most audience members have seen a production of it — between the original Broadway production which opened in 1950, the film starring Marlon Brando (no, he can’t sing) and Frank Sinatra, all the high school and community theater shows, and the ’90s Broadway reprise starring Nathan Lane, there have been enough of them. At this point, any production of Guys and Dolls is all about nostalgia — polishing the fins on that old ’57 Chevy and watching her ride.

From the opening scene, Director and Choreographer Andrew Glant-Linden and Costume Designer Alan Michael Smith succeed at bringing back the gamblers, chorus girls, and mobsters of 1950s Broadway in full-motion technicolor. The characters — conceived in the Jazz-Age memories of short story writer Damon Runyon and made to sing and dance by Frank Loesser — come to life in fuchsia, plaid, and yellow-checked suits with matching fedoras. Even the beat policeman swings across the stage in electric blue.

You know the plot — Lieutenant Branigan, Dick Tracy trench coat and all, is on the trail of Nathan Detroit (Ed Romanoff), organizer of the “oldest reliable permanent floating crap game in New York.” Detroit and his affable cronies, Nicely Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet have to find a way to win a bet with the mythical golden-boy, Sky Masterson, use the money to procure the only location left for the crap game, and not let Detroit’s fiancée, Adelaide (Beth Glover), find out about it. The “sure-thing” bet with Sky (Steven Bogard) is that he has to convince the beautiful missionary, Sarah Brown (Christine Toy Johnson), to accompany him to Havana.

The heart of Guys and Dolls — the dancing and singing — is not overlooked. Roland Rusinek brings an appropriately powerful voice to the jolly Nicely in the opening numbers, and Romanoff plays a sniveling, sympathetic Detroit for “The Oldest Established.” As Adelaide, Glover, along with the “Hot Box Girls,” gives the audience the sweet, ditzy bimbo with attitude in “A Bushel and a Peck” and the classic, “Adelaide’s Lament.” Johnson and Bogard both show impressive voices from their opening duet, “I’ll know,” and throughout their budding, unexpected love. As they clapped in time with the music rising out of the orchestra pit between scene changes, Thursday night’s audience reveled in MSMT’s production.

Despite the polish of this faithful production, two of the numbers in Act Two touch on an inevitable problem with watching Guys and Dolls in a different age. “Take Back Your Mink” is the second, much bawdier number of “Adelaide and the Hot Box Girls,” in which the Girls wind up shimming and shaking their fannies in black lingerie. While this routine would be expected on a Las Vegas stage, the hoots from the crowd made me wonder where the line is between nostalgia and returning to the sexism of a bygone era.

The same goes for “Marry the Man Today,” which, as the title suggests, is a reflection on why dolls like Sarah and Adelaide should hurry up and marry their guys, warts and all, in order to trick them into changing later. For a 21st century audience who knows a divorce rate over 50 percent, that can’t help but sound dated.

Yet, no matter how much things have changed, the basic premise of Guys and Dolls presents an interesting connection between eras. The implication — that men are all guys who want to shoot crap and avoid marriage and women are dolls whose sole goal is to get to the altar — is only a few decades, a spliff, and a forty-ounce malt beverage from the gangsta rap ideal that men are all dogs and women are bitches and hos. Neither lovers of Guys and Dolls nor Eminem wannabes will like the comparison, but it’s there nevertheless.

Still, as I said earlier, this show is about nostalgia. Just as the most feminist of the feminists can shake her booty to an old Coolio video, it’s hard not to like the singing and dancing of MSMT’s Guys and Dolls. The scene when the crap game moves to the sewers on account of the sore-loser Big Jule, and Sky roles against all the fellas in “Luck Be a Lady” is one of the most classic for a reason. And when Nicely belts out the lead for the rousing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” and the finale takes us back to the Broadway of old, you can bet the audience is shaking and tapping anything they can. /P>

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc can be reached at riverbetweenus@hotmail.com.