Stages: GUYS & DOLLS at the Kennedy Center
Stages: GUYS & DOLLS at the Kennedy Center
"I've never been in love (with Guys & Dolls) before . . . "
GUYS & DOLLS, Presented by Broadway Center Stage at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., October 7 - 16, 2022
{WARNING: As with everything I write in this, my substack, I don’t just discuss the show (or book, or song) but, rather, I talk about the event as if I were journaling; I spend not a little amount of time giving insight into my frame of reference, life experience, and context that affects how I see and experience the thing I’m discussing. So, I don’t necessarily get to the actual event as quickly as some would like. Feel free to skip through the PRE-SHOW opening and personal sections, right down to the conveniently labeled SHOW section.}
PRE-SHOW/PERSONAL
It was last Monday, October 10th, when I received this text from my dear friend, Andrea:
I think we should go to the KC (Kennedy Center) to see GUYS AND DOLLS. This weekend. I should have thought of it earlier, but I can still get tickets. What do you think?
Pasquale . . . .
It took me a few minutes to think about this. Prior to covid, Andrea and I regularly attended shows and concerts and movies. I adore Andrea for many, many reasons, and one of the top five is that we are equally prone to weeping and gasps of appreciation and hand grasping in joy as audience members. But, since covid, we’ve gone very few places; we’re both still masking when we go out to stores or libraries or anywhere, and since we both have severely immune compromised loved ones in our lives, we continue to be very, very cautious. Also, the drive to the Kennedy Center is fraught with opportunities for stress, and, too, memories of pre-GPS trips where being lost in the incredibly confusing DC streets for ages trying to get to the Kennedy Center — which you could see but not find — was a given, still twist my stomach into pre-trip knots. And, finally, we are both introverts, and I have long been borderline agoraphobic, which tendency was exacerbated by the months of covid isolation; doing things outside of my very local comfort zone requires a real effort nowadays.
But, time with Andrea. A musical. I’d never seen any of the four leads in person before. The reviews were rapturous. And, TIME WITH ANDREA. And so I answered:
Yes. Let’s.
I am a fanatic about being on time. In my world, if you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late. And when it comes to theatre, I prefer to be in my seat at least twenty minutes before curtain. I like to read the program and scope out the audience. So, we left Frederick at 5:30 for the eight o’clock curtain in D.C. — a drive usually about 45-50 minutes — but because of traffic accidents, construction, and re-routings, it took twice that amount of time to arrive at the Kennedy Center. Thus, we did not have time to nosh at the Kennedy Center Cafe, which we ALWAYS do. However, we did have time enough to hang out in the lobby and slam down a glass of wine — well, I did. Andrea had a water.
We headed to the ticket taker, printed tickets in hand. Note: the last time we’d been to the Kennedy Center, Andrea had her tickets on her phone. Or, so she thought. Long/short of that, we ended up being sent by the ticket taker to the theatre manager, who checked us out and let us in. Thus, this time, print the tix. Only, ticket taker one couldn’t get them to scan. They sent us to another usher. They could not get the tickets to scan either. And so, once again, we were sent to the theatre manager who looked at our tickets — which were purchased on the secondary market — asked us to wait, went to the nearby phone and made a call, and returned to tell us to go right on in, everything was fine. I worry we’re getting a reputation. Worth noting: all the ushers and ticket takers and volunteers at the Kennedy Center are incredibly nice, accommodating, welcoming.
We got to our seats. Row G. House Right. Aisle. And it was nice to see that everyone seemed to be abiding by the Kennedy Center policy of requiring a mask while in the theatre, although they were optional in the other Kennedy Center spaces, and, as of this coming Tuesday, will be optional in the theatres as well. Then, they seated the foursome in front of us.
Picture: a cis-het couple, probably in their late forties, early fifties, and a set of parents, late seventies, maybe older, who seemed to belong to the woman. Issue one: they entered the row at first with younger woman, older woman, older man, younger man. However, older woman would not sit down. She insisted that younger man should be seated next to younger woman and she on his other side and older man on the aisle. Younger woman said no, this was fine, she didn’t need to sit next to younger man. Older woman insisted. Turned toward younger man, remonstrating, he should sit next to his wife. He smiled, saying no, it was fine. Older man asked what was going on. He couldn’t hear. Younger man turned to him to explain while older woman turned back to younger woman — who was the only one of the four seated — to again insist that younger man MUST sit next to her, his wife. I’m starting to dislike older woman. Sit the fuck down, maybe, you’re the only one disturbed by the seating arrangement. I notice younger woman has her mask pulled down under her nose. I decide I don’t like her either, and this is further validated by her saying, of for god’s sake just move over here because she’s not going to shut up about it. Younger man turns to move out of row, but older man has by then sat down. Older woman leans across and tells him to get up. What? He says. We’re changing seats, answers younger man, and he and older man and older woman file out of row, rearrange in aisle so younger man goes in first and is next to younger woman whose mask is not being worn correctly, followed by older woman, whose jewelry I notice is a lot, and then, older man. And when all four are finally seated, older woman and older man removed their masks completely and produce from I do not know where or how — two cocktails, plastic tumblers, no lids. Along with the signs everywhere saying masks must be worn are signs telling you only drinks with lids are allowed in the theatre.
Andrea and I are harrumphing. Granted, in 72 hours masks will be optional in the theatres. But tonight, they are not. Tonight, we are going to be entertained by a cast who believe they are performing in a venue where the audience members will be masked. Unbeknownst to each other, Andrea and I are both vacillating between the “they’re in their 80s and Tuesday it won’t matter” and “who the fuck do they think they are getting to break all the rules?” But, pre-show announcements are happening, turn off your phones, no recording, etcetera, and the show is about to begin. Older man puts his mask back on. Older woman puts her in her purse and tells older man to hold her drink, and younger woman still doesn’t have her mask on correctly. I dub them Karen the Older and Karen the Younger because they have worn my last nerve. And then, lights down, curtain up, gorgeous set, orchestra on stage, overture — fully staged — commences.
And husband of Karen the Younger, henceforth known as Chad the younger, lifts up his phone and starts recording.
Let me take you back in time to that trip Andrea and I took to New York to see Bette Midler who’d returned to the role of Dolly Levi to close the show. Picture, if you will, the woman beside Andrea, already a chair-arm hog, who pulls out her phone and starts to record the show. Now, picture if you will, the kind, polite, lovely, most empathetic person I have ever met in my life, Andrea, going Patti LuPone on chair-arm hog woman, telling her to put her phone away. Chair-arm hog woman huffs a bit and drops her camera to her lap, at which point Ms. LuPone Andrea says, “No, put it AWAY.”
Chad the younger didn’t stand a chance. Andrea leaned forward, tapped him on his shoulder, and told him to stop recording. He was taken aback. But he complied. Andrea later said she had considered for a moment his ginormous size before LuPone-ing him, but rules is the rules, folks.
SHOW
I once directed a youth cast in GUYS AND DOLLS, and I’ve seen the abysmal movie version, but apart from that I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the show, although never had I seen a professional production.
This was a magical night.
The curtain rose on a full orchestra arranged in two tiered boxes that looked like giant dice rolled onto the stage. And what an orchestra it was; conducted by Music Director, Kevin Stites, the score is iconic and gorgeous, and the arrangements, by Michael Starobin for the 1992, Jerry Zaks production, are fantastic and full. Kudos too, to the sound designers, Kai Harada and Haley Parcher, for amazingly even balance between orchestra and singers; it was such a pleasure to hear a show sound so natural, and every word and lyric clear and audible.
Once one became accustomed to the awe brought on by the orchestra boxes — which got uproarious applause when the curtain rose — the rest of the physical production came into view. The proscenium was parenthesized by two huge street lamps, lined with marquee light bulbs, and the back of the stage scrim was a screen on which appeared projection after gorgeous projection setting the scenes, to which were added minimal stage sets and pieces brought on and off by the cast, and, too, details and suggestions of sets were flown in from the flies. The set and projection design by Paul Tate dePoo III, in tandem with the lighting design by Cory Pattak, was ingenious, witty, and earned its own applause as well.
Handled with less aplomb and expertise, such expense, creative energy, and embarrassment of talent dedicated to producing for only ten performances a show now seventy years old might easily have been a travesty. Instead, this felt like a marvelous gift, an emotional caesura in the cacophony of the current news cycles and election run-up.
GUYS AND DOLLS has been called a perfect musical. I’m not sure there is such a thing, but this production came pretty damn close. Granted, the company started with some of the richest material from the Golden Age of Broadway musicals. The music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, don’t waste a beat on anything that doesn’t move the story forward or reveal character or just simply delight and charm. That’s something of a miracle considering the original book by Jo Swerling was mostly ditched, and Abe Burrows brought in to write a story around the songs Loesser had already written.
For the few who don’t know the plot(s), Nathan Detroit runs a floating crap game in Damon Runyon’s New York City, circa 1920s-30s, and he needs to find a location for the game but the heat is on, enforced by police Lieutenant Brannigan. Detroit has repeatedly promised his “well-known fiancee”, Miss Adelaide, a nightclub performer, to marry her and to stop running the crap game — but in fourteen years, neither has occurred. Parallel to this plot, Miss Sarah, the missionary, has been charged with making the Salvation Army post in the city of sinners a success, but has had little to no luck converting the miscreants, reprobates, and immoralists, and so the mission is in danger of being closed. Connecting the plot lines is Sky Masterson, a gambler from out of town who falls for a sucker bet from Nathan in which he must convince Sarah to fly to Cuba with him for dinner. The crap game happens. The trip to Cuba happens. And spoiler alert: Both couples beat the odds and marry for a merrily ever after finale.
The overture and Fugue for Tinhorns are impeccably and imaginatively staged, movements motivated by character, and story told through the physical goings on. And the voices! By the time Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Benny Southstreet, and Rusty Charlie harmonized their way through to the final line of Fugue; “I’ve got the horse right here!”, you knew your hands would be hurting by the end of the evening. Kevin Chamberlin, multiple Tony Award nominee, as Nicely-Nicely, is clearly ecstatic to be embodying this joyful character, and is also in the next rip-roaring number, THE OLDEST ESTABLISHED, the applause for which seemed as if it might not ever end. And then, Chamberlin very nearly brings down the mission in Act 2 with SIT DOWN YOU’RE ROCKING THE BOAT.
Then, Scene 2. Which is where I first gasped in pleasure and wept. Phillipa Soo. When she first starts the intro to I’LL KNOW, her “For I’ve imagined every bit of him,” it is lovely, controlled, perfectly delivered halfway between a dream of perfection and a young person’s foolish idea of what love is. And then, dear spirit of Mary Martin, Ms. Soo sings the two words, “ I’ll know….” and that, dear reader, is where this babbling substacker lost his shit. The soaring splendiferousness of her tone, and the way she goes from straight tone to vibrato and then decrescendos (or, is that diminuendos? It’s been a long time since I looked at a piece of music.) on the “know” — unbelievable. I mean, not just the beauty of the sound, and the force of the emotion around which it wrapped itself, but the command of technique and artistry. I can only compare it to the first time I heard a recording of Barbara Cook singing GLITTER AND BE GAY from CANDIDE.
While I was near hyperventilating from the sheer otherworldliness of Soo’s Sarah song, Steven Pasquale joined in. See note.1 That is a voice. And he's gorgeous. And they are a couple in the real world and boy-oh-girl-oh-boy did it come across on stage, and radiate into the audience. After they'd finished -- and none of us wanted them to finish -- there comes what I believe used to be called an "in one", a short scene that could be played in front of the grand drape while scenery was changed behind it on-stage, back in the days before technology and computerized moving sets and crashing chandeliers and helicopters landing on stage and pussycats ascending to heaven on a tire became de rigueur. Smart move to put a comic-bit, the phone call Nathan makes to the unseen Joey Biltmore of the Biltmore Garage where Nathan wants to hold the crap game. Joey sounded suspiciously like Harvey Fierstein, and that, and the humorous dialogue took us far enough out of the magic of Sarah and Sky so that we might give Miss Adelaide and her Hot Box Girls a fair listen.
When Miss Adelaide is being played by Jessie Mueller, believe me, she’s going to get more than a fair listen.
Now, truth be told, the thing I like the least about GUYS AND DOLLS, happens to be the numbers Adelaide sings in the club. I find BUSHEL AND A PECK, and TAKE BACK YOUR MINK, both, to be simultaneously too twee and too nudge nudge wink wink joke-sexy-cutesy. Granted, contextually, Adelaide is not a big star. She is the headliner in what is more or less a dive, and it makes sense the numbers she performs would be less than A-grade. Still. Not for me. Luckily, both are fairly short.
And, petty cavil about a show that had two weeks rehearsal before moving into the theatre, but, while the male dancers were choreographed and synched to a kick-ass degree, the choreography for the Hot Box females was rather less creative and, simple though it was, rarely together — someone or two was/were a beat behind or ahead, kicks different heights, timing just very sloppy. For a minute I thought perhaps it was a choice — they meant for the Hot Box dancers to be a bit sloppy — but, ONE: if so, it should have been made more clear, and TWO: when we got to Havana, and the females joined the males for partner dancing, there it was again — a lack of sharpness. One guesses that so much energy and attention was paid to the big male numbers — OLDEST ESTABLISHED, CRAPSHOOTERS DANCE, and LUCK BE A LADY — that all the other numbers, admittedly less intense and impactful — got short shrift in rehearsal time and attention.
And while I’ve landed at the male dances, the CRAPSHOOTERS DANCE and LUCK BE A LADY both received well-deserved thunderous ovations, some folks stood, many more screamed and hooted and refused to stop applauding. Those numbers were athletic, intricately woven, crazily exploding phantasms of dance, and, too, wit.
But, back to Adelaide. Who, shortly after BUSHEL AND A PECK, and a scene in which she reveals to Nathan that her mother thinks they’ve been married for twelve years and have five children, sings the character’s signature number, ADELAIDE’S LAMENT.
I’d never seen Jessie Mueller in person before. She is instantly likeable. There’s just something about her mien that calls out, you think, “I bet she’d be a great friend.” I knew her voice was beautiful — and though this role doesn’t give her lots of opportunities to sing-really-sing, she managed to find places where her belt and her effortless mix could be put to good use. And she was funny. But not so funny that she wasn’t also touching. She modulated the performance and played a character rather than a caricature. She found things in ADELAIDE’S LAMENT that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone play before. She’s an actress who sings. And sings from the soul.
While it’s hardly fair to compare the chemistry between a married couple like Pasquale and Soo, with the connection between Jessie Mueller’s Adelaide and James Monroe Iglehart’s Nathan, it was a stretch to believe Adelaide and Nathan had been in love for fourteen years. However, they were both so damned good and delightful and funny and PRESENT, it didn’t much matter that their “couple-dom” was lacking.
It is a shame that the role of Nathan was originally written for Sam Levene, who could not sing, and so Nathan’s only song is SUE ME, during which his choruses are basically interstitial spaces wrapped around Adelaide’s ranting verses. A shame because that is a waste of a great voice when Tony Award Winner, James Monroe Iglehart, doesn’t get to sing a few numbers. I know the GUYS AND DOLLS score and still I sat there hoping beyond hope they’d find a way to give him a number on which he could really wail.
But, while Iglehart didn’t get to wail, Phillipa Soo made up for it. Her vocals on IF I WERE A BELL gave me chills.
Her break was invisible, the switch from chest to mix to head voice, just unbelievably smooth. And then she and Pasquale on “I’VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE” - yep, reader, I cried. And then, very near the end of the show, Adelaide and Sarah finally sit down and get to know one another and from this comes MARRY THE MAN TODAY. Not just the voices, but the staging and the playing of so many intentions from different directions between the two of them, like a vocal-acting tennis match where both won the prize.
The guys were both great. Loved them. Iglehart and Pasquale. But the women — not dolls — women, are who made the show. Mueller and Soo both delivered fully realized human beings. So often Adelaide and Sarah are played as stereotypes, all surface and no soul. Not here. Both actresses took us on a journey with their characters and neither of them ever made an easy, throw-away choice. Mueller’s ditsy wasn’t dumb-ditsy, when she was ditsy it was chosen ditsy, coming from someone who knew the best way for her to move through the world in which she found herself. She was a grown-up in a way Nathan was not. And Soo’s Sarah was revelatory and should be required viewing for anyone who plays the role from now on. Never did we get a stiff spine-nose in the air automaton; her emotional heft and vulnerability were evident from her first cross on the stage. These actresses took roles that could easily be outdated, offensive sex-role insults, and made them grown up, fully human women in control of their own worlds.
In fact, lots of the show could strike one as sexist and backward and antique — but somehow this production doesn’t. The dizzying pace, the machine-gun quick highlights coming at you, none of it felt jarringly out of time and needing to be put to rest. It wasn’t just a lesson in musical theatre history, rather, it was an enjoyable musical in 2022.
It helped, I think, that there was integrated casting. I will not launch into a pedantic lecture here about my philosophy on same but … See Note.2
I do have to say that the stunt casting of Rachel Dratch as Big Jule felt like … well, stunt casting. Granted, all the “gangsters” in the show are joke-gangsters, but there was a sketch-comedy aspect to this that didn’t mesh with the rest of the show and cast who had worked so hard to be real human beings inside vibrant, right-next-to-but-never-quite-over-the-top characters. All love to Rachel Dratch, but it just seemed sort of a gratuitous “oh look how cool I am” moment, ill conceived when the rest of the show was so grounded in real emotional truth.
But, small beans, that. The show was 99.9 percent perfect.
I wish I could say quick, get tickets, even if you need to take out a loan to do so, get them and get there. Alas, it would take more than a fortune, it would require a time machine. The show ended its ten performance run today.
POST SHOW/PERSONAL
During the show, Karen the Older and Chad the Older, in addition to having no-lid cocktails and not wearing their masks, also kept leaning into one another repeating what had just been said on stage. What? He said …. Over and over it happened. It was kind of (incredibly) annoying.
Andrea put out a lot of money for those close to the stage aisle seats, as had everyone else around us. The cast and audience expected to be in an auditorium where everyone was masked. There were signs and announcements about masks and drinks and cameras and phones. So, what is it that made Karens the Old and the Young, and Chads the Old and the Young, think they could ignore all of those rules, and, too, talk in the middle of a show, loudly enough to help the other — each clearly hard of hearing — to follow the show? Which, by the way, could be followed without hearing any of the dialogue at all.
And this, dear readers, is another reason I’d almost always rather stay home. I don’t want to deal with this ignorance and entitlement disease. I don’t want — as Andrea and I discussed for part of the drive home — which, by the way, took less than half the time the drive to the Kennedy Center took — to have to be arguing with myself in my head;
“Do I tell them to quit invading my life-space with their entitlement?”
Oh Charlie, the Olders are in their late seventies, eighties, and how many more shows will they have together? They’re having such a good time.
“But, why should my good time be compromised because they’ve decided they are more important than everyone around them? How is that fair?”
Oh Charlie, do you really want to have this fight?
“But why should I be stomach-in-knots because I feel taken advantage of and belittled by their entitled behavior?”
Oh Charlie, —-
— and so it goes. Which is why I don’t go so much. And speaking of, thanks for reading and … here I am, going.
You may remember a few thousand words ago, Andrea’s text to me asking about attending GUYS AND DOLLS, which she followed up with the one word message, “Pasquale.” For my 53rd birthday, a group of my friends, at my request, made a one day trip to NYC to see BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. I love Jason Robert Brown’s music. I love Kelli O’Hara’s voice. And there was an agreement among those of us who were oriented toward sex with men, that Pasquale, despite having divorced Laura Benanti, was incredibly hot and had a gorgeous voice. Alas, we saw no Pasquale that day, his understudy, Kevin Kern was on. Kevin Kern was so DELICIOUSLY sensual and sang like he was fucking, we couldn’t believe Pasquale could be any better. So, this was our chance to see.
I started getting shit about being non-traditional before I ever even went to school. I sang all the time from a very young age, and was early on a musical theatre freak. I did not want to play the male roles, I wanted to be Julie Jordan, Dolly, Cinderella and her stepsisters. I sang those songs. And the male relatives — and sometimes the female — would tell me not to sing those songs. I couldn’t sing those songs. Those were for girls. Fast forward to my early teens and my honest-to-Ethel-Merman belief that the world was going to become a place where FUNNY GIRL would be revived on Broadway and I would play Fanny. And jump a few years more into my future, I started directing. I cast real size women as Electra and Rose in GYPSY and got letters about it. I played Marta in a production of COMPANY decades before Marianne Elliott got Sondheim’s okay to change some of the genders in the show. Got tons of crap for that. Cast people of color in traditionally caucasian roles, often switched or ignored genders in casting, inserted gay subtext and couples, people into shows wherever I could. My feeling was — and is — if we ever do truly evolve as a race, this humanity thing, the color of skin, the genitals worn, the age, the size, none of that will matter. None of that should matter. I decided that if I wanted to teach the children I was teaching to be all-inclusive, then it had to start with the shows we did and the way we cast them — and I believed, and told them, and continue to tell myself — what matters is the essence, the soul, the light within. If I saw what I believed to be the essence of Sid in PAJAMA GAME in the heart and presence of a young man with tattoos and a pierced nipple — that was who I was sending out on stage. I got torn apart in a newspaper for that. And I didn’t care then and I don’t want to care now. And I am not unaware that this approach can sound as if I am denying people their heritage, denying gender traits, and on and on; I’m not trying to stop anyone from claiming heritage or being whatever and whoever they want to be, I’m simply saying, I want to live in a world where what we relate to in one another is soul essence, the truth at our centers beyond and before any labels.