WORTH ANOTHER VISIT? O YES
It’s a gig, it’s a party, it’s as glorious as ever. Down on the floor the promenaders surge between changing stages as they rise and fall to create old Manhattan: part of the show, New Yorkers themselves, teased by gangsters, bombarded by strippers’ pompoms or appealed to by emotional lovers. Up in the galleries meanwhile we pause fascinated for a moment as we look down to see the stage crew, dressed as cops, smoothly ushering these braver, cheaper audience members to new vantage points – once a small crowd momentarily surrounded by wild Cuban dancers. Then like them we are caught up again in the tensions and hilarity of Damon Runyon’s glamorous lowlife 1920s. On it goes, joyful, until Nicely Nicely barracks the conductor for another chorus of Siddown and as the tumult of applause ebbs up from nowhere come Miss Adelaide and Sarah Brown, drinking furiously on barstools as they work out that if you want to change a rascal you gotta pin him down.
There’s nothing like this innovative, physically exciting and musically gorgeous revival, a whole new life for a classic. It raised spirits and esprit de corps after the pandemic , has run for nearly 18 months and storms on until early January. Casts have been refreshed: now we have Michael Simkins as a sweet solemn Abernathy and Gina Beck as Sarah : she unmatchable in voice, poise and – importantly – wild discarding of that poise. Some shows sort of wear out, and the latter days of CATS felt frankly exhausted; but so far here there is no fatigue, either in the show or the multiple returning audiences. Who will probably need therapy on January 5th.
I revisited it on its birthday and have bought tickets with friends twice more. Here for more detail are the old reviews if tou want them:
But this time I just thought I’d record new affections for Hytner’s direction and Bunny Christie’s complex engineered design , and as a veteran of those galleries here are some moments you really don’t, want to miss.
Like the moment when suddenly it’s Havana – how did that happen so fast? How did Sky Masterson and Sarah fly five hours in two seconds? What happened to the promenaders? And where the hell did those lamp-posts come from, strong enough for Sarah to swing around them in drunken glee singing “If I were a bell I’d be ringing”?
Or perhaps it’s a small thing, like the arrival of Miss Adelaide’s kitchen-shower mob, barely there for two minutes but unforgettable down to the last banged saucepan. Or the boxing-match that pops up and disappears again. It might be the deliciously vulgar Hot Box bushel-and-a-peck routine, or the more suave one with the mink and pearls. Maybe the tap routine in the interval makes you hurry back from your drink so as not to miss anything. It could be anything. But you’ll love it.
But maybe it is just the way that when the big cast and crew assemble at last to salute one another and the band, and melt amiably to dance with the prommers – gratitude makes you fall in love with the whole lot of them, and with every technical, lighting, musical, choreographic, design and directorial hand that assembled to make us happy, together, as a show is meant to.
One other note of gratitude, by the way. When someone, a virtual stranger, asks a critic, socially “What’s good to see in London now? Where shall we book?” It is usually awkward . You don’t know them, and can’t judge instantly whether they’re Ibsen-and-David-Hare sort of people or the Mamma Mia ’n Wicked crowd. Send them the wrong way and they’ll curse you. But you can send them all to this particular, particularely special, production of Guys and Dolls. If they’re not happy , they don’t deserve to be.
bridgetheatre.co.uk. to 4 January
Note that under the usual G & D 5 there’s a Director Mouse for Sir Nicholas Hytner.
And no, I can’t make it bigger or add a design-mouse for Bunny Christie because my fine IT guru ,who set all this up 10 years ago, is recovering from a near-lethal snakebite in Mozambique (which sounds like the best dog-ate-my-homework excuse but is dramatically true.). So let the director for once stand alone, modest in nature though he is.
theatreCat 