'Guys and Dolls' at The Savoy Theatre

I saw this new version of 'Guys and Dolls' at Chichester last year where it first played and it has now come into London at the Savoy before going on tour. It's jut as colourful and fast-paced as I remember it. There have been a few cast changes but it still features Sophie Thompson as Miss Adelaide and Jamie Parker as Sky Masterson, with new additions David Haig as Nathan Detroit and Siubhan Harrison as Sarah Brown.

You now the story of gamblers and nightclub singers in New York crossed with the Salvation Army and a trip to Cuba. Nathan's trying to set up a game and Sky is challenged to taking Sergeant Sarah to Cuba for dinner and he does so on the basis that he will provide twelve guaranteed sinners to Sarah's congregation the following night. It all goes right and then oh so wrong as Miss Adelaide and Nathan break up and Sky and Sarah fall in love. O dear, life is never straight-forward is it? Will it all work out in the end? I can't possibly tell you, you'll have to go and see it for yourself.

Sophie is great fun as the ageing Miss Adelaide who's been engaged to Nathan for a mere 14 years and never seems to move towards marriage. She hates his gambling but she loves him and can't help it. She milked every line at least twice for every laugh and she got the laughs too. David Haig was great as Nathan, very natural and slotted in nicely - they played off each other very well and had great timing. Jamie was good as Sky but I was less convinced by Siubhan as Sarah - I couldn't help but wonder what Julie Covington was like in the role back in the early 80s with the much-lauded revival at the National Theatre. I liked Gavin Spokes as Nicely Nicely, one of Nathan's gamblers who gets the show-stopping moment of 'Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat' towards the end and a great scene it is too. The other big show-stopper is Sky's 'Luck, Be A Lady' in the sewers beneath Manhattan when he wins twelve souls for Sarah at a game of dice and won back his marker.

If you get the chance, go and see this show, either at the Savoy or while it's on tour in 2016, it's well worth it.

Five Plays

Last week I saw five plays. I know that's a bit much but I saw three of them in the space of 55 minutes so it wasn't really that extreme. I saw 'High Society' at The Old Vic, 'American Buffalo' at Wyndham's Theatre and the trilogy of short pieces 'Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby' by Samuel Beckett as part of the Beckett festival at the Barbican.

First up was 'High Society', the stage version of the classic film with Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The stage is set in the round for some obscure reason which makes the stage even smaller, especially when they do some big dance pieces. It's nice that they use the whole space but I couldn't see why it was needed. I liked the minimal staging with grand pianos rising and falling through the stage at different times and the only constant was a small bar that doubled as a breakfast bar and trebled as a cupboard to display wedding gifts. For, of course, this is about a wedding.

Tracy Lord used to be married to Dexter, a rich playboy and yacht designer but is now going to be married again from her parent's home on Rhode Island. And Dexter turns up the day before the wedding with news that two journalists will arrive to cover the wedding as part of a deal to keep her father's latest affair out of the newspapers. Tracy decides to play the outrageously privileged daughter of wealth and go over the top for the journalists before getting sloshed at the evening's party and swimming naked with one of the journalists when her husband-to-be appears. Could it get any worse? O yes, of course it could.

It's fun as far it goes, lots of music and movement, lots of laughs and dancing. But it didn't make me interested in the characters or like them or care what happened to them. I don't particularly care whether a rich heiress marries the journalist, the bore or the yacht designer and I should. Why was that? I like the film and the characters but that didn't follow through to this play. It wasn't helped by Kate Fleetwood's accent being unintelligable some of the time so I couldn't follow what she was saying or by the loudness of Jamie Parker as the journalist - a bit of subtlety goes a long way sometimes. Something that really irritated me was the long dance sequence that opened the second half - all dancing with little of the main characters to help the story along.

Yes, it was ok, and I'm pleased I've seen it but I won't be going back for a second glass.

The second play was 'American Buffalo' at Wyndhams with the star turns of Damian Lewis and John Goodman. It's a small story set in a neighbourhood junk store in New York or Brooklyn or somewhere where the shop owner has just sold an old coin for a comparative fortune that makes him plan to steal another one from a house around the corner to make another good sale. And that's sort of the story but there are lots of twists and turns along the way along with some laughs.

John Goodman is the amiable store owner with a good word to say for everyone, including the local junkie kid who hangs round the store. Then in comes Damian Lewis as the typical loud-mouth with his 70s porn star moustache and cheap suit. He'll help with the robbery and brings along a gun. But it all goes wrong when the junkie needs money.

I suppose that's the whole story. I didn't get any more really and I wasn't terribly impressed. It was ok but... and that's where I get stuck. The continuous repetition of phrases and questions got irriatting after a while (y'know, the Robert de Niro 'you talking to me?' thing) and that's all Damian Lewis's character seemed to do. I'm sure I missed a lot of very clever acting by being distracted by the repetition and that's the play, not this production or the actors. Wyndham's seems to specialise in working class American plays, with 'A View from the Bridge' a few months back and now this. I'm tired already.

It was good to see John Goodman and I really liked his cool, gentle portrayal of the junk shop owner with his basic trust in humanity. His is a nice character in poor circumstances. I was less keen on the rapid-fire and repetitious porn star of Damian Lewis and the annoyance of Tom Sturridge's junkie.

The third was a trilogy of plays performed as part of the Beckett Festival at the Barbican. Now, I'm not a particular fan of Beckett but sometimes it's worth seeing things you wouldnt normally go to see if ony to open up the mind a little bit and that's what these plays did - illustrate that the theatre and the stage can be many things and don't have to be the same old same old. The trilogy was 'Not I' followed a few minutes later by 'Footfalls' and then by 'Rockaby' all performed by Lisa Dwan and completed in 55 minutes.They were staged in The Pit theatre, many levels underneath the Barbican - so many stairs going down means we must have been close to the centre of the Earth. I was slightly conscious of the sheer weight of building above us.

We were let in to a dimly lit theatre with no lights on the stairs and with emergency exit signs covered up. It's to be seen in pitch black with very few lights, sensory deprivation and atmosphere, just words and some movement. First up was 'Not I' with a totally blacked out stage with a spotlight on lips and teeth spouting words high up above the stage. Speaking at an incredible rate, so fast that I couldn't follow what was being said and, every now and then, she'd slow down and then speed up again, a chatterbox just needing to get the words out. A stream of conscious internal monologue taken to extremes. How on earth could she learn so many, many words and spew them out so quickly? Most impressive!

Beckett had obviously used up his quota of words and the second play, 'Footfalls', replaced many words with the character of Amy pacing slowly back and forth as she carried on a slow dialogue with her (dead?) mother. Pacing back and forth, back and forth, setting up a conscious rhythm to the play. There was slightly more light in this one as Lisa paced across a lighted strip on the floor and her shoes echoed.

The final piece was 'Rockaby' with Lisa in a rocking chair rocking slowly back and forth while listening to her life retold by either herself or someone she knows, I was never sure, every now and then shouting out for 'more!' that keeps her story and her life going and developing until ... the end.

My favourite of the three was 'Not I' and that was also my favourite of the week's worth of plays. It did it's job admirably. It challenges the convention of the play and the stage, the glam and glitz that are totally absent, even the actress is absent other than her mouth and voice. It was most impressive - and so was Lisa Dwan. I'll be watching out for her name in future.

'Guys And Dolls' - Chichester Festival Theatre

On Saturday Chris took me down to the Chichester Festival Theatre to see the matinee of the new production of 'Guys and Dolls'. 'Guys and Dolls' holds a special place in the theatre pantheon since the 1982 production at the National Theatre is what got Chris into theatre in a big way. Some things matter.

It takes an hour and a half heading south by train from London to reach Chichester, trundling through Surrey and into the Sussex countryside with cows and sheep - yes, real wild animals! Luckily they only attack at night so we were safe.

Anyway, there we were, waiting to be wowed or saddened and I was much heartened by the first glimpses of the staging with a semi-cicle of advertising posters gracing the stage like it was Times Square. I liked it. I liked it even more when the lights surrounding each poster flashed on like Broadway signs. That was truly spectacular with the reflection on the shiny back stage creating a great effect. The action all took place with minimal sets under that great backdrop and it was very effective. The energetic cast kept the pace fast and tight, jumping and dancing all over the place (including the bicycling nun collecting money) creating a picture of the big city, vibrant and full of life and danger.

It's a love story, of course, bit it's not straightforward at all (is it ever?). We have Nathan Detroit, a rogue setting up an illegal crap game, and Miss Adelaide, an aging chanteuse who is a star at the Hot Box club. They've been engaged for 14 years and that sort of says it all. On the other hand we have Sergeant Sarah Brown, leader of the Times Square branch of the Salvation Army, and Sky Masterson, a gambler supreme in New York for a few days who accepts a bet from Nathan that he can't get Sarah to have dinner with him in Havanna, Cuba. Of course, that's where it all goes wrong because they fall in love.

We see Nathan trying to set up his dice game and keeping away from the police and Sky trying his wiles on Sarah. Sky succeeds by guaranteeing twelve sinners will attend her midnight meeting the following day. One complication after another ensues, along with broken promises and love-lorn moments before all comes well in the end - with a few twists in the tail, naturally. One of the funniest moments of all was when Miss Adelaide curses Nathan because, for once, he actually tells the truth!

Was it worth the treck out into the countryside? You betcha! I loved it and even bought a programme. I saw the 2005 revival that was really a star vehicle for Ewan McGregor but this far surpassed that version and I finally saw the underlying joy and life in the show. There are laughs a plenty and great songs and a story that just works.

There are four equal leads in this show and you need all the pieces in the right proportions. Peter Polycarpou and Sophie Thompson played the older lovers of Nathan and Miss Adelaide and Jamie Parker and Clare Foster as the young lovers Sky and Sarah. I've seen all of them on stage before - other than Jamie - and I have to say it's the older lovers who won the awards for best performances. I quite liked Jamie but Clare doesn't quite seem to have found her character yet. Jamie really killed it with 'Luck Be A Lady' when he was playing for souls, his own as Sky included.

Clare came fully to life for her song with Miss Adelaide, the fun 'Marry The Man Today' and change him tomorrow rather than worrying about it today. That's the penultimate song of the show and gives the female characters another chance to shine  and shine they did, climbing up on the chairs and giving it some big wow as well as laughs, with Sophie slowly prowling the stage.

Peter and Sophie played off each other like old pros and Sophie in particular milked every situation and line for the laughs, sometimes just by lowering her voice on the right line. That was a masterclass in comedic acting. It was definitely Sophie and Peter's show and that's how I'll remember it, those two showing us how it's done!

I've already said that the set was excellent, very evocative, flexible and impressive. And so was the lighting and costumes - and so many costumes! I loved the suits of the gamblers, all colourful but not garish and I'd wear them (if I wore suits). The backdrop and the lighting totally changed the mood whenever needed without any overt change, just a subtle switch of the light to change the mood, bathe the stage in a different light and, hey presto, a new set!  It was really clever and simple. And, more importantly, it worked.

D'you know what I want? I want to see this production again. I now *get* 'Guys And Dolls' and want to *get* it again. I want to see Sophie Thompson and Peter Polycarpou and want to see Clare Foster (who I loved in 'Crazy For You') to grow into her role. And I want to see Jamie as Sky punch Big Julie.  Yes. This show needs to transfer to the West End. Make it so, please.