Review: GUYS AND DOLLS at Moonlight Stage

If you like your musical theatre big, brassy, funny, and just a little bit crooked, Moonlight Stage Productions has a bet for you: Guys and Dolls, and this production is a winner.

Frank Loesser’s score and the book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, inspired by Damon Runyon’s 1930s New York gamblers, showgirls and missionaries, have been around since 1950, but the material still crackles when the cast is good, and the staging has enough muscle behind it. Moonlight’s production, directed by Larry Raben, has both.  With more than 30 performers, a powerhouse orchestra, lavish staging and choreography by Bill Burns that puts the entire stage in motion, this is musical theatre with its sleeves rolled up and its hat tipped at a rakish angle.

At the center is Nathan Detroit (Steven Glaudini), a fast-talking craps-game impresario who has been engaged to nightclub performer Miss Adelaide (Bets Malone) for  14 years. But Nathan's luck, like Adelaide's patience, is about to run out. Glaudini and Malone, married in real life for 31 years, have the lived-in comic chemistry to make Nathan and Adelaide’s perpetual battle over marriage one of the show’s great pleasures.

Malone is terrific, playing Adelaide as funny and flamboyant but also genuinely worn down by waiting for that wedding ring. Her famous psychosomatic cold is a comic masterpiece of nasal misery. Glaudini’s Nathan is equally appealing: slippery, anxious, and always convinced he can talk his way out of the latest disaster.

The second romance belongs to gambler Sky Masterson (Patrick Cummings) and missionary Sarah Brown (Alessa Neeck), and the contrast works beautifully. Cummings and Neeck play their relationship with considerably more sincerity, giving the production a sweet, grounded center amid all the comic chaos.

Then there are those gambling guys who sing and dance and bet the house. Chase Lowary nearly steals the show as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, a gambler whose inability to keep his mouth shut repeatedly threatens Nathan’s schemes. Lowary is hilarious throughout, but he gets his big moment in “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” and absolutely sails away with it. His voice is terrific, and Burns’ choreography turns the number into a full-scale theatrical explosion. 

Burns' choreography is one of the production’s greatest pleasures. “Havana” is terrific, filling the stage with movement, color, and energy, while the second-act “Luck Be a Lady” is an absolute knockout. Burns manages the large ensemble with impressive precision, creating those big, synchronized dance moments that make Moonlight audiences cheer. This is choreography designed for an amphitheater — expansive, athletic, and unapologetically showy.

DeAndre Simmons is another standout as Big Jule, a Chicago gambler who manages to be both genuinely menacing and completely ridiculous. Michael Paternostro and Greg Nicholas have fun as Benny Southstreet and Harry the Horse, while Ralph Johnson brings warmth and humor to Arvide Abernathy. Meghan O’Brien Lowery gets some excellent laughs as the missionary General Cartwright.

The musical direction by Elan McMahan is equally impressive. The vocal harmonies are gorgeous, and the orchestra gives Loesser’s score the punch, swing, and musicality it deserves.

Raben also deserves credit for resisting the temptation to treat the characters as mere stock types. Yes, Guys and Dolls carries some of the gender assumptions of its 1950 origins, particularly in the Nathan-Adelaide relationship. But this production gives its women more dimension and lets the romances feel like relationships rather than simply plot machinery.

The design team adds plenty of visual sparkle, with original projections by Austin Dycus, lighting by Thomas Yurick, sound by Jim Zadai, and hair and wigs by Peter Herman.

Ultimately, Guys and Dolls is a show about gamblers who bet on everything except the thing that really matters: love. Moonlight knows exactly how to play that hand.

Big laughs. Big voices. Big dancing.

And with Bill Burns’ choreography lighting up the stage,  this Guys and Dolls makes one thing very clear: at Moonlight, the audience wins.

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