A standing ticket puts you in the heart of New York in Guys and Dolls and the Bridge Theatre
Director Nicholas Hytner’s production of Guys and Dolls is a triumph.
There have been many revivals of this classic on the London stage in recent years. But this production is something special and its real star is the inspired set design of Bunny Christie.
Christie has previously worked on Hytner’s immersive production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which presented Caesar as a Trump-like populist. Another, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, re-energised the story by making fairy-king Oberon fall in love with Donkey-headed Bottom instead of Titania.
For both productions Christie constructed an ever changing set that allowed a section of the audience to engage with the production as part of an extended cast. Christie works her magic again with Guys and Dolls. If you can stand for the production’s three‑hour running time do yourself a favour—buy a promenade ticket and enjoy the intimacy of immersive theatre.
While the staging of the production itself is radical, the plot is less so. Guys and Dolls was blocked from winning the Pulitzer Prize for letters in 1951 because one of its writers, Abe Burrows, was seen as a communist.
But there’s little subversion in the musical’s plot which follows two petty criminals finding their way to respectability through love. Hytner does tweak the heterosexual-oriented narrative where he can, most clearly in the Cuba sequence.
This is a spectacular, joyous, life-affirming theatre with a luminous cast and crew. Special mention must be made to Marisha Wallace’s Miss Adelaide and Cedric Neal’s Nicely-Nicely.
His rendition of “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” brings the house down. What a night in the theatre.
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