Guys And Dolls (Bridge Theatre, London)
Verdict: Still got it
Nicholas Hytner’s immersive restaging of Frank Loesser’s glorious musical about illegal gamblers in 1930s New York has just been nominated for an Olivier Award for best musical revival. It’s also had some cast changes.
Timmika Ramsay is the new, full-throated and sassy Hot Box singer Miss Adelaide, and Owain Arthur joins the cast as her marriage-averse fiance Nathan Detroit, giving a comically broad performance as he evades both his put-upon gal and the cops while setting up an illicit craps game.
George Ioannides remains as a slick Sky Masterson, with Celinde Schoenmaker continuing as Sarah Brown, the innocent Salvation Army girl who wants to save his soul but ends up being his doll.
Theatre production Guys and Dolls at The Bridge Theatre 2024
The immersive restaging of Frank Loesser’s glorious musical about illegal gamblers in 1930s New York
Timmika Ramsay is the new, full-throated and sassy Hot Box singer Miss Adelaide
Images from the Guys and Dolls production
The show has lost some of its fizz in this iteration, particularly in the first act. But it springs back to life in the second and remains a great night at the theatre, writes Veronica Lee
While all the principals sing beautifully, particular mention must go to another newbie, Jonathan Andrew Hume as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, who leads the cast in the showstopper Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat, which also — er, nicely-nicely — shows off the choreography by Arlene Phillips and James Cousins on Bunny Christie’s evocative set.
The show has lost some of its fizz in this iteration, particularly in the first act. But it springs back to life in the second and remains a great night at the theatre.
boxoffice@bridgetheatre.co.uk
By Luke Jones
The Duchess Of Malfi (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe)
Verdict: Should have been creepier
Guidance tells us this play contains themes and scenes of incest, misogyny, child death, sex, violence, sexual violence, strangulation, murder, stage blood, guns, knives and a partridge in a pear tree.
I took my seat in the Globe’s replica and candlelit Jacobean playhouse with my triggers nice and warned, but a somewhat clunky evening ensued.
Our young widow Duchess decides to marry again and start a family, albeit in secret to avoid upsetting her scheming brothers. Alas, the plan unravels, disastrously, and her murder sets off a chain reaction of reprisals.
The play was written in 1614 for exactly the kind of murky, shadowy theatre that the Wanamaker was modelled on.
In fact, a devastatingly creepy production, starring Gemma Arterton, opened this replica when its ribbon was cut in 2014.
But the 2024 version felt like promising drama students in their final year show: incredibly clear (the text is even projected onto the set as we go), but unmoving.
Director Rachael Bagshaw hams up the jauntiness, which make the tragedy almost laughable when it finally comes.
Francesca Mills, as the titular duchess, is either all winks and smiles, or wild screaming despair. I didn’t buy a second of it.
Likewise her wicked brother Ferdinand, played by Oliver Johnstone, speaks proficiently but his descent into madness isn’t fooling anyone.
We’ve odd additions to the text, too: a subtle reference to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and a Botox gag clanged loudest.
Some break through with affecting turns. Arthur Hughes, back from his acclaimed showing as Richard III at the RSC, is the unfortunate Bosola, who metes out much of the misery with touching internal conflict.
But it’s a disappointment for such a juicy play on home turf. ‘I account this world a tedious theatre,’ we’re told at one point. Too true.
