It shouldn’t be much of a gamble for Atlanta Lyric Theatre to stage Guys and Dolls. It’s one of the funniest and best-written musical comedies of all time. However, the production, onstage at the Jennie T. Anderson Theatre in Marietta through September 4, rolls the dice and comes up snake eyes.
The show lacks nuance and verve, unfortunately. It feels as though the Lyric selected this season opener because it’s fun and popular, something that would appeal to subscribers they’re hoping to draw back into the theater. Yet the Lyric hasn’t paid much attention to the fact that Guys and Dolls works best when it plays up its sinful edges, energy and wit.
Just because the show is a familiar classic that opened on Broadway in 1950, it shouldn’t be played as safe, flat and boring. The script is about vice. It’s supposed to be sexy and forbidden. The Lyric staging feels mostly tedious. When you even manage to rob the great 11 o’clock number “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” of its rousing spirit, that’s just a crime.
The characters such as Nathan Detroit, Sky Masterson and Miss Adelaide, who run around Times Square and seek out indulgences, are usually the most fun. Here, the prim, repressed missionary Sarah Brown (a terrific Jaymyria Etienne) steals the whole damn show by being the one who plays up the joy of corruption.
Based upon the stories of Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and a book by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling, follows a gaggle of gamblers, drunks, gangsters and go-go dancers who circulate Times Square at night. Nathan (Juan Carlos Unzueta) runs a popular underground craps game for high rollers, managing to avoid the cops by constantly switching its location. Nathan also manages to avoid the pressures of his fiancée Adelaide (Chloe Cordle), a squeaky-voiced showgirl who has been engaged to him for 14 long years.
Nathan needs $1,000 to pay for the latest location for the game, so he bets Sky (Marcello Audino), a sexy gambler and womanizer recently returned to town, that he won’t be able to coax Sarah, who leads the local Save-a-Soul Mission, to join him on a trip to Havana.
Meanwhile, Adelaide has developed a psychosomatic sinus infection and nagging cough because of her very long engagement, not because she dances onstage barely wearing anything, and she’s considering giving Nathan an ultimatum.
The wit of Loesser’s lyrics is a large draw for this show, usually. But, because this staging uses a canned orchestral track that allows for little variation in timing, or the performers just didn’t understand where the punchlines were, several opportunities to coax laughs are missed. The musical notes here are sung through with technical precision, yet the words pass without much consideration.
Something of a dingbat, Adelaide is one of the funniest roles in Broadway history, and Cordle is a talented singer. But she offers little variation in delivery during “Adelaide’s Lament” when the character is reading through a medical textbook. When she sings the “See note” line, for instance, Cordle never pauses for effect. And, worse, she punctuates every verse with sneezes, though that stylistic choice probably wasn’t hers. Her voice is admirable, but her comedy lacks oomph.
Etienne, in comparison, has a wonderful voice but also excellent comic presence. When her stick-in-the-mud Sarah starts to loosen up and flirt with Sky while imbibing a “Cuban milkshake” full of Bacardi, inadvertently causing a riot in a dance club, there is spare dialogue, yet it is the funniest scene.
The choreography of that scene, designed by Veronica Silk, is terrific. And the other wordless scene, “Crapshooters Dance,” is nicely done.
As Sky, Audino has a terrific voice and physicality. When he’s in a scene with Etienne, sparks fly. And his “Luck Be a Lady” is an excellent solo.
Unzueta is very funny as Nathan and a solid singer. The duet with Cordle on “Sue Me” is strongly sung, though, again, many of the comic opportunities in the lyrics are missed. The line “So new?” isn’t even sung as a question.
In smaller roles, Caleb Brink is competent as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, another polished singer who’s not particularly funny. And Jody Woodruff, playing Sarah’s grandfather, has a beautiful singing voice, though he looks too young for the part.
Director Kayce Grogan-Wallace should’ve made a point of hammering the jokes and overall tone better. Guys and Dolls requires extremely precise execution to do right. This production needed a dramaturg who could’ve provided guideposts to the cast. It’s not supposed to be a polite show. By 1950s standards, it was racy. Instead, few here seem to understand that context. In fact, no one onstage seems to be relishing the chance to do Guys and Dolls, which is a shame.
Instead, this production, though it boasts good set design from Stephanie Polhemus and bright costumes from Vicky Zuffoletti and Mary Nye Bennett, is clumsily done. For instance, this show reveals the outcome of Sky’s final crapshoot before its effect on the story comes into play, which cancels a tiny but necessary moment of suspense.
In fairness, the August 27 performance attended by ArtsATL for review may have been a chaotic anomaly, as the matinee that day had been canceled due to an ensemble cast member’s Covid diagnosis, and a replacement dancer learned the show’s choreography in four hours. But regardless the reason, the endeavor felt off.
Case in point: Director Grogan-Wallace, an accomplished gospel singer who appears in the show as Save-a-Soul’s General Cartwright, entered a climactic scene accidentally wearing a face mask and began delivering dialogue. The character is supposed to hit a glorious high note to back up the choir of voices singing “Sit Down,” yet the note went unsung.
Times are tough. Fun escapism might be the goal of the Lyric, but Guys and Dolls should be more mindfully executed than this.
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Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. His plays have been produced at The Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Center for Puppetry Arts. His novel Impacted was published by The Story Plant in 2021.
