Review: Guys and Dolls

Tracy Micailidis with ensemble (photo credit: Andrée Lanthier)

WE'RE JUST A CRAZY BUNCH OF GUYS AND DOLLS
by Jessica Wei

Warm lights, jazzy American pop music, and New York in the 1940s – is there any better setting after walking around in cold Montreal wind and rain? 

After having seen the Segal Centre's production of “Guys and Dolls”, I'm convinced there isn't. Marking Diana Leblanc's directorial return to the Segal Centre and starring seasoned CanCon musical theatre vets Scott Wentworth, Frank Moore, Susan Henley and others, this musical tells the tale of star-crossed lovers in the Broadway everyone dreams about (underground gambling, sassy showgirls, snappy rhetoric and even a few zoot suits). Nathan Detroit (Moore) mans a news stand by day, runs a floating craps game at night, and when he's not doing either, he's trying to keep his showgirl fiancée Adelaide (Henley) happy with evasive promises of marriage. Having encountered some financial problems – enough to threaten his circuit – he makes a bet with fellow gambler Sky Masterson (reprised by the dashing Wentworth) a bet that seems almost fully guaranteed in his favour. A thousand buckaroos says Masterson can't convince a beautiful Christian missionary to go to Havana for a date. But as any man with a pair of dice in his pocket knows, life is a gamble.