The Arkansas Repertory Theatre goes back to the pinnacle of musicals as they used to be as it stages Frank Loesser's "Guys and Dolls" for its December production.
"It's funny, there's great music, there's great dancing," says the Rep's executive artistic director, Will Trice. "'Guys and Dolls' practically defines 'golden age.'"
And it's great quality thanks to Trice, according to director/choreographer Gustavo Zajac.
"Will is treating this [production] as Broadway quality," Zajac says. "The rehearsal time, the designers, the details, the cast — he wants to make sure it's the same experience [for] the audience as if they go to Broadway."
Based on characters created by Damon Runyon in the '20s and '30s — New York gangsters, gamblers and other underworld denizens — the show focuses on two "couples": Nathan Detroit, who operates the "oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York," and who has been engaged for 14 years to Miss Adelaide, a nightclub singer-dancer; and Sky Masterson, the ultimate gambler, who finds himself — as the result of a bet with Nathan that seems to have gone haywire — wooing straitlaced Save-a-Soul missionary, Sgt. Sarah Brown.
The show premiered on Broadway in 1950 and ran for 1,200 performances, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. A 1955 film adaptation starred Marlon Brando as Masterson, Jean Simmons as Sarah, Frank Sinatra as Nathan and Vivian Blaine as Adelaide.
THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM?
It's the third time Carlos Lopez will be playing Nathan Detroit. The first time was in the 1992 Broadway revival. He was 26. (Other Broadway credits for Lopez include "Man of La Mancha," "Grease," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Wonderful Town," "A Chorus Line," "Pajama Game" and "Grand Hotel.")
"It's always a new experience," he says, especially since each time "you're working with new people. The audience is always new. You're telling a beautiful story, and some of them are getting it for the first time.
"I'm seeing things [in this production] that I've never seen before."
And every new director brings a fresh perspective, Lopez says. For example, Zajac's staging for "Sue Me," a "duet" in which Nathan and Adelaide (Stephanie Gibson) spar musically over his inability, even after 14 years, to commit, takes place on both of the set's two levels — the only number in the show, Zajac says, that does. "They interact upstairs, they interact downstairs," he says, "but never on the same level at the same time." Lopez describes it as sort of a "Romeo and Juliet" moment. (Think balcony scene.)
Nonetheless, he says, the show is "still nostalgic and still awesome, and still maintains that Runyonland mystique."
P. Jay Clark, who plays Detroit's sidekick Nicely-Nicely Johnson, notes that "it's hard to realize the show is 72 years old, and still reaches us — the story, the music." (Clark is returning to the Rep stage, where he played Monsignor O'Hara in "Sister Act" and Mr. Pinky in "Hairspray.")
"It's timeless," adds Gibson about the musical.
The show may be timeless, but it is also of its time. Zajac confirms the setting remains the 1950s, "right when it was written. We're being very respectful of the period — the costumes, the research, the style."
Director/choreographer Gustavo Zajac comes “home” to the Arkansas Rep at the helm of “Guys and Dolls.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Stephen B. Thornton) DIRECTOR'S HOMECOMING
It's a homecoming of sorts for Zajac, a native of Argentina and an alumnus of Hendrix College in Conway, where he was enrolled from 1990-94. "I used to come to this theater as a student," he says, "and I have friends who work here."
He discovered through a magazine profile that Trice was coming back to his native Little Rock after a successful career as a Broadway producer to resurrect the theater after a financial meltdown forced it to close and cancel all theatrical activities in April 2018. As the theater was emerging from covid-19 lockdowns, he contacted Trice and told him he would love to do a show here. This is the one they came up with.
BUCKET-LIST ROLE
"I've been working to play Adelaide my whole life," says Gibson, who appeared on Broadway in the 2013 revival of "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella," "The Addams Family" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." "It has been a bucket-list role for me."
She doesn't have to look far for inspiration: "Lucille Ball is my everything. She shows up in most roles I play. This is a comedian's dream. I hope to do it justice. There's so much to squeeze out of it."
The cast is more or less evenly divided between "imported" actors and locals, and it's un-traditionally diverse, with Black actors in some leading and secondary roles and Hispanic and Asian performers in the ensemble.
Christian McQueen says he struggled at first to come up with a voice for gambler extraordinaire Sky Masterson.
"He's the coolest guy in the world, and sort of larger than life," he explains. To play him, "you've gotta be 'the guy.'" Zajac, seeing he was having a hard time, told him to "just speak like yourself."
That was part of the answer; the next difficulty was to match his speaking voice to his singing voice. Once he overcame that challenge, "that's how I found my voice for the show," McQueen says.
McQueen is making his second visit to Little Rock; he came through town a year ago in the national touring company of "Anastasia."
Kim Onah says the role of Sarah Brown "hasn't been something I've seen myself in. The soprano stuff is in my wheelhouse, but not something folks have seen in my wheelhouse."
Though she has been classically trained, she sees herself as being largely a belter. She gets to belt a little in the number "If I Were a Bell," but mostly Sarah's numbers require her to sing sweetly.
Her major challenge in taking on the role: "Sarah's rigidity," she says. The key has been "understanding that she comes from a place where she has her goals and her ambitions set ... and her priorities change because of love. You can give in to that, or you can push back against it." Sarah, she says, does both — pushing back at first, then yielding.
'ALL STAGING'
You may not think of "Guys and Dolls" as a big dance show, but there's plenty of work for Zajac the choreographer and his assistant, Cardona.
There is, for example, the numbers set in the Hot Box ("Bushel and a Peck" and "Take Back Your Mink"), the nightclub where Adelaide is the star performer. There's a big dance in Havana, where Sky takes Sarah as the condition of his bet with Nathan.
Then there is the instrumental "Crapshooters Ballet" preceding the song "Luck Be a Lady," and that number as well, with the cadre of craps players rolling dice in the sewer. Three members of the crap-shooting band are exceptional dancers, Zajac says.
"Me and my assistant worked all day [recently] on that," he adds. "I think we got it right."
He doesn't, however, draw any kind of line between directing and choreographing: "I don't separate them — it's all staging."
“Guys and Dolls”
- What: Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, based on a story by and characters of Damon Runyon
- When: 7 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, previews Wednesday-Thursday; runs Friday-Dec. 31
- Where: Arkansas Repertory Theatre, 601 Main St., Little Rock
- Tickets: $30-$65
- Information: (501) 378-0405; TheRep.org