Guys and Dolls

Musical (1950)
Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling
Directed and Choreographed by Ceit Zwell
Music directed by Dan Rodriguez
Greater Boston Stage Company
Stoneham, MA
June 7-30, 2024

With Jared Troilo (Sky Masterson), Lisa Kate Joyce (Sarah Brown), Arthur Gomez (Nathan Detroit), Stephen Markarian (Nicely-Nicely Johnson), Sara Coombs (Miss Adelaide), Chip Phillips (Arvide), Carolyn Saxon (General Cartwright), Mark Linehan (Benny Southstreet), Abigail Martin (Agatha | Hot Box Girl 1), Darren Paul (Harry The Horse), Kaedon Gray (Calvin, Brannigan), Hannah Shihdanian (Angie | Mimi | Hot Box Girl 3), Allison Russell (Martha | Big Jule | Hot Box Girl 2), Christian David (Rusty Charlie), Laura Markarian, Autumn Blazon-Brown

In New York of the 1920-1930s, the gambling gang is urgent to find a place to host a craps game, and Nathan Detroit (Arthur Gomez) is the man on the job. Nathan has been involved with Adelaide (Sara Coombs), a show girl, for fourteen years, resisting marriage at every turn. Meanwhile, the moral reformers, led by Sarah Brown (Lisa Kate Joyce) are on the move and seeking recruits, but not having much success. Sky Masterson (Jared Troilo), a sharp gambler, appears on the scene and takes an instant liking to Sarah. She resists his attractions, but, after a quickly arranged and highly unexpected day trip to Cuba with him, where she discovers, and has her highly rigid behavioral standards lubricated by, the magic of a wondrous nectar called Dulce de Leche which she doesn’t realize is alcoholic, she is smitten with him as well. Back in New York, things get somewhat complicated as Sarah’s moral reformation chapter is threatened with a shutdown, but Sky helps to bring in some new recruits and things perk up.

It’s amazing how little of a story there is in this wonderful, classic musical and that minimalism is part of what gives it its charms. It’s about two distant worlds coming together through love. The depiction of those contrasting universes through the musical and lyrical genius of Frank Loesser, and the brilliant book by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling, makes the whole thing tick. There is just something about the unsettling of the two rigidly held viewpoints of Sky and of Sarah and their gradual melting through their mutual attraction, that makes one smile. Were the world only so simple.

In any case, it’s simple enough in the world of Guys and Dolls and with a carefully crafted and engaging production of the sort given at Greater Boston Stage Company, the charm comes right through. The staging by Ceit Zwell is intimately done – more or less in front of the wonderful onstage band led by Dan Rodriguez – but that makes it no less dramatic. Full scale company dance numbers choreographed with ingenuity and taste also by director Ceit Zwell provide robust entertainment throughout. And, that intimate fore-stage provides a warm and contained frame for the smaller encounters that populate the script and score in between.

In the focal role of Sky Masterson, Jared Troilo, a well-known Boston musical stage actor, does a superlative job. His embodiment of the role is an astute combination of brassiness and warmth. He manages to convey a character who one really does believe could fall in love with someone from a distant universe. His singing is strong, clear and tonally rich, his acting and singing truly anchor the production, and this is among his best performances.

As Sarah, Lisa Kate Joyce is appropriately wired down when necessary, and spunky and quite funny when the wires get undone. Her voice is pointed and strong, a little shrill in I’ll Know but truly wonderful and at its best in the celebratory If I Were a Bell. And the chemistry between Troilo’s Sky and Joyce’s Sarah works nicely throughout, brought forth with vocal vividness in the culminating Act I duet I’ve Never Been in Love Before.

As Nathan Detroit, Arthur Gomez has a woolly magnetism that fits in quite well with the sharp and funny electricity of Sara Coombs’ excellent Adelaide. Gomez holds down the scurrilous sentry-in-charge role with aplomb and poses his elusive vagueness about marriage like a shadow next to her forthright anxiety over the situation. As Adelaide, Coombs has a brassy command of the situation and makes her love and devotion to Nathan a centerpiece graced with considerable wit, despite the lingering forlornness of his impossible slipperiness. In Adelaide’s Lament, Coombs does a lovely solo job. In the classic A Bushel and a Peck, but also in Take Back Your Mink, she and the Hot Box Girls do a lively and highly creditable job.

The small onstage orchestra is very tight and plays the lush and elaborate score with finesse. In addition to the jazzily brassy numbers, there is also a whole Latino sequence which they carry off very well, replete with Cubano hats, and, of course, the intentionally out of tune impressions of the moral reformers very bad brass band. They are excellent.

Other performers, notably Stephen Markarian as Nicely Nicely who has a couple of great numbers, and Chip Phillips as Arvide, Sarah’s grandfather, who holds forth briefly but engagingly in More I Cannot Wish You, fill out this excellent production.

There is wonderful satisfaction in seeing a local, independent theater do such an wonderfully intimate and engaging job with a show which, in other contexts, has far bigger, and far more costly productions, demonstrating that high qualities of musicianship, direction, staging and performance can, in smaller and more modest contexts, provide significant appeal.

Overall: Excellent – go see it!

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)