Review Roundup: GUYS AND DOLLS Opens at the Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' Broadway Center Stage production of Guys and Dolls, is running now through October 16. The new production helmed by Marc Bruni (Beautiful, 50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center, Broadway Center Stage: The Music Man) features an all-star cast led by Tony Award® winner James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton, 50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center) as Nathan Detroit, Tony Award® winner Jessie Mueller (The Minutes, Waitress, Broadway Center Stage: The Music Man) as Miss Adelaide, Steven Pasquale (The Bridges of Madison County, Junk) as Sky Masterson, and Tony Award® nominee and Grammy Award® winner Phillipa Soo (Into the Woods, Hamilton) as Sarah Brown.

They are joined by three-time Tony Award® nominee Kevin Chamberlin (Seussical, The Addams Family) as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Tony Award® nominee Rachel Dratch (POTUS, Saturday Night Live) as Big Jule, Jacqueline Antaramian (The Visitor, Dr. Zhivago) as General Cartwright, Fred Applegate (The Producers, The Ferryman) as Arvide Abernathy, Eden Marryshow (Archive 81, Ink) as Lt. Brannigan, Matthew Saldivar (Bernhardt/Hamlet, Junk) as Benny Southstreet, Jimmy Smagula (Broadway Center Stage: The Music Man, Billy Elliot) as Harry the Horse, and Akron Watson (Empire, The Play that Goes Wrong) as Rusty Charlie/Hot Box MC.

This Tony®-winning favorite by composer/lyricist Frank Loesser and book writers Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows has been hailed by many as a perfect musical comedy. Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City of the 1950s, Guys and Dolls follows a rowdy bunch of gamblers, gangsters, and showgirls in a wild game of chance-all set to Loesser's immortal score featuring songs such as "Adelaide's Lament" and "Luck Be a Lady."

Let's see what the critics had to say...

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Peter Marks, The Washington Post: I'm calling on some higher authority to step in and order a stay of disassembly, and to hold the actors, led by Jessie Mueller, Phillipa Soo, James Monroe Iglehart and Steven Pasquale, at the D.C. border. Only 10 performances? For this magnitude of delight, let alone inspiration? May some exalted eminence hear my plea and preserve this experience, or, at least, spirit the whole kit and caboodle - set pieces, props, costumes, orchestra, dancers, stars, da woiks - to another locale and a future life. (Did I hear someone mention Times Square?)

Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: Though she's typically associated with more serious roles, Mueller is a complete delight-and a little Mae West-esque-playing the bleached-blonde Hot Box headliner Miss Adelaide, as beautiful and bawdy and believable in the sniffle- and sneeze-filled "Adelaide's Lament" as she is in the hip-swiveling striptease "Take Back Your Mink." Soo finds every bit of humor in Sarah, who, let's face it, often comes off as a major stick in the mud. And then there's Pasquale, oozing charisma from the moment he steps onstage in a perfectly tailored three-piece suit and jauntily cocked fedora (Mara Blumenfeld designed the costumes, as vibrant as the streets of New York City themselves): Pasquale was pretty much born to play the silver-tongued Sky; his "Luck Be A Lady" is a spine-tingler from start to finish.

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