Guys and Dolls delights in Skokie

Years ago, I interviewed my late mentor at Columbia College Chicago, Sheldon Patinkin, around the time his 2008 history of the American musical theater, No Legs, No Jokes, No Chance, came out. I asked him if he had a favorite musical and he said that whenever anyone asked that, he would respond that his favorite musical comedy “is Guys and Dolls. Because it’s perfect.”

The current Music Theater Works staging by Sasha Gerritson may not be perfect, but it’s sure delightful, and in the main exquisitely cast. The story of gamblers Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson and their “dolls”—singer/dancer Miss Adelaide and missionary “sergeant” Sarah Brown—feels fizzy, full of life and optimism without losing the hard-boiled gloss of the original Damon Runyon stories on which the 1950 musical (music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows) is based.

Guys and Dolls
Through 3/30: Wed 2 PM, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; ASL interpretation Sat 3/22 7:30 PM; North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, musictheaterworks.com, $19.50-$106

Detroit (played with note-perfect jittery nerves by Callan Roberts) seeks a place for his “oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York”—no easy feat since a nosy cop is breathing down his neck. He needs a thousand dollars to secure a location, and in order to acquire the cash, he makes a bet with Masterson (Jeffrey Charles, knowing and suave) that Masterson can’t whisk the upright Sarah (Cecilia Iole) to Havana for a night. But as we know, good girls like falling for bad boys, and musical comedies love an opposites-attract storyline. Meantime, Adelaide (a splendid Kristin Brintnall, echoing Judy Holliday’s Billie Dawn from Born Yesterday as a tough but loving dame) grows tired of waiting for her 14-year engagement to Detroit to bear fruit. And a mobster from Chicago named Big Jule (played for laughs by the diminutive Andrew Freeland, who is no less menacing for being shorter than the rest, thanks to the outsize pistol on his hip) won’t take no for an answer when it comes to keeping the (literally) underground craps game going.

Featuring a stellar eight-piece orchestra under conductor Kevin Disch (Linda Madonia is the music director) and a strong supporting cast (including Cary Lovett as Detroit’s sidekick Nicely-Nicely Johnson), along with supple choreography by Clayton Cross (particularly notable in the wordless interludes “Runyonland” and the “Crapshooters Ballet”), the show has few weak links. Iole, who has a gorgeous soprano, did seem to take a little while to warm up her Sarah at first—Sarah’s moralistic, but not rigid, as Jean Simmons so beautifully demonstrated in the 1955 film, and at first Iole’s Brown seems more hesitant than frustrated by the lack of response to her missionary work among the New York scoundrel set. But I get the sense that Iole will find even more layers to Sarah’s worldview as the show continues, and her chemistry with Charles (especially in the Havana scenes) is already on point.

Is there a reason right now to revive this show? Not particularly, but if you like fun and some of the best songs ever composed for the American musical theater, you could do a whole lot worse than head up to Skokie and roll the dice on Gerritson’s Guys and Dolls.