Review: GUYS AND DOLLS Being Classic in Israel
By: Ronit Suzan Sep. 19, 2016
Immediately following a highly praised 6 months run at the Phoenix Theatre in London the production of Guys and Dolls went on an international tour starting with a week and a half in Israel, playing 11 shows at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.
The story is set in New York City, as the stage set presenting the skyline of the city and its bright lights indicates, where we find dice game organizer Nathan Detroit trying to arrange a game. The problem begins when the one venue that he can set for it requires him to somehow get an amount of money he doesn't have, which against the will of his fiancée for the past 14-year, Miss Adelaide, leads him to a gamble with the legendary gambler Sky Masterson. As a part of their bet, Sky must convince the pious missionary Sarah Brown to join him for dinner in no other than Cuba's Havana, for which he promises her he'll bring a dozen sinners for her mission's next faithful meeting in order to save it from shutting down.
As almost the entire West End cast went on this tour it's clear to see the production's terrific casting, initially indicated by the impressive fact that all the actors performed with a fluent American accent and some even added a bit of New York accent successfully.
The cast includes Simon Lipkin as Nathan, who might not channel too much of his character's sinful background but sure portrays him with lots of charm, and Oliver Tompsett as Sky, who manages to be as smooth and in control as you'd expect from a notorious gambler and with his one of a kind voice helps preserve the musical's era even better than the wonderful costumes in the show. The two are joined by the talented Siubhan Harrison as Sarah and Lucy Jane Adcock as Miss Adelaide who both bring their characters to life with great humor, emotion and brilliant voice control. But as much as all four shined on the stage they couldn't have done it without the rest of the wonderful cast who showed great acting, singing and especially dancing skills, even though occasionally it felt as if the delightful choreography wasn't very much sophisticated for a West End show.
The dances, songs and quick changing stage set provided an effortlessly advancing plot that even though it included quite a bit of shallow physical comedy it did have plenty of sophisticated verbal humor. That is, if you ignore the "Shabat Shalom" comment that Sky welcomes Big Julie with. This might be a gimmick with good intentions but it was both irrelevant to the story and rather unnecessary and hopefully won't be included at the tour's upcoming destinations (with local adjustments, of course).
With over 65 years since this musical was written Frank Loesser's always relevant and loved music and lyrics proves once again in this production how timeless and classic it is. The brilliant live orchestra helped maintain that feeling with the aid of the sound which was very in favor of the music and had clearly forgotten that in a musical it's as much important to hear the lyrics as it is the music given how much louder it was than the excellent singing. For this reason, luckily there were Hebrew subtitles otherwise it would've been very difficult to understand the lyrics, although the inconvenient location of the subtitles, their inaccuracy which at times even reached the point of being ridiculous, especially during the songs, and their occasionally bad timing when they preceded what was on stage and ruined a few punch lines (a kind of theatrical spoiler) was quite disappointing.
With such a magnificent production of a beautiful show, one can only hope that it would bring other musicals' international tours to follow it and include Israel in their destinations.
Guys and Dolls is playing at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center until September 23rd.
Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes, including intermission.
Photo Credit: Johan Persson.
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