Were critics Havana good time at immersive Guys and Dolls?
Guys and Dolls has opened in London! This bold new immersive staging offers audiences a chance to get up close to the action in a glitzy staging at the Bridge Theatre. But what did the critics think? Find out in our review round-up…
Sarah Crompton, WhatsonStage
★★★★★
“Nicholas Hytner’s revival of Frank Loesser’s 1950 masterpiece again banishes the blues and emerges as a definitive and joyous piece of theatre. It is an absolute triumph, not to mention a blast.
“To stage it, Hytner has ripped out the Bridge’s innards to create a large arena, which holds more than half of the audience and stands selling pretzels and trilbys. Into this swirling mass, Bunny Christie’s set emerges on a series of raised and lowered platforms, with neon street lights above signalling the venues where the story unfolds – Mindy’s restaurant, Glancy’s Gym, the Hot Box nightclub.”
Clive Davis, The Times
★★★★★
“Daniel Mays makes a winningly careworn Nathan Detroit, dashing around like a seedier version of that old gent David Tomlinson. Andrew Richardson is a debonair Sky Masterson who happily dances with a ripped male admirer in Cuba. Celinde Schoenmaker’s evangelical ice maiden, Sarah Brown, melts gently on a tipsy treatment of “If I Were a Bell”. Along with the volcanic Wallace, Cedric Neal’s Nicely-Nicely Johnson takes the vocal honours on a lissom “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat”. He also turned up as the lead singer in the excellent close-harmony group that serenaded us during the interval.”
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph
★★★★★
“The pre-show antics hook you in, but not decisively so: guys sell “gen-u-ine” hot-dogs, dolls hawk pretzels, with ad-libs cut from the same cloth as Abe Burrows’s inventively slangy, wise-cracking script. Bunny Christie’s colourful décor is an organised chaos of traffic lights and signage answered by a cacophony of subway rumbles and traffic. Even so, only when the overture strikes up and Runyonland springs to life, does everything click beautifully into place. Slabs of stage rise and fall from view – furnished on the spot by the crew, with a card-sharp’s dexterity, to denote the welter of locations.”
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard
★★★★★
“The casting of the four leads is spot-on, with Marisha Wallace an absolute standout for her powerhouse vocals and perfect comic timing as Miss Adelaide, the scantily clad club singer who just wants to be married. Seriously, give her all the awards right now.
“Subtitled ‘a musical fable of Broadway’, Guys and Dolls is a carefully constructed juxtaposition of gamblers and god-botherers, slyness and sweetness, comedy and romance. Wallace’s verve is duly balanced by the melting coolness and clarity of Celinde Schoenmaker’s missionary Sarah Brown.”
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out
★★★★★
“If Nathan and Adelaide are the beating heart of Hytner’s production, then the romance between Andrew Richardson’s suave career gambler Sky Masterton and Celinde Schoenmaker’s missionary Sergeant Sarah Brown feels appreciably shakier. That’s probably the point. Sky does, after all, only ask her out on a date (to Havana!) as a bet with Nathan.”
“He’s interesting: yes, he has some great one-liners, but the lisp-voiced Richardson – in a great stage debut – plays him with a slightly mournful vulnerability. When the pair go to a bar in Havana and Sky dances with another woman… well here it’s a gay bar, and it’s not a woman Sky dances with. A bit of fun, for sure, but the inference is surely that Sky is struggling with his identity as much as Sarah is with hers; come the end their romance feels sincere, but fragile. Which is good: romcoms shouldn’t have to end in total resolution.”
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian
★★★★
“There is one potentially dangerous moment in that central romance between Sarah and Sky when, during their night in Havana, he is seductively pulled into a clinch with a man on a dance floor of male couples with bare chests and shorts. The suggestion that Sky just might be gay creates a thrilling spark of subversion but is an isolated moment, gone in a flash, as if a scene from a far more daring reconception.
“Maybe because of the ever-reconstructing set, the drama itself never quite sweeps us in, although there is a sweet dynamic between Richardson and Schoenmaker, as well as good comic chemistry between Wallace and Mays.”
Sam Marlowe, The Stage
★★★★
“The immersive approach may feel like a novelty when applied to this best-loved of shows, with its fabulously hummable Frank Loesser score. Yet in truth, the effect is less than transformative. For all the vibrant fun of Bunny Christie’s designs, we don’t really feel as if we’re swaggering through a heady night aglitter with tawdry promise, hanging around the counter at Mindy’s Diner, or interloping at a gangsters’ illegal crapshoot. It’s all a little too slick and neat for that.
“But for those of us who choose to promenade (seated tickets are also available), the proximity to the action, and to each other, creates a buoyant party atmosphere. And it facilitates some intimate moments that, among the feel-good ebullience, deliver a startling emotional kick.”
