...Lace Market Theatre prepare to stage it

Guys and Dolls is considered by some to be the best Broadway musical ever written. Both a Tony Award winner for Best Musical and a Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, Frank Losser's tale of gambling, religion, sex and innocence is to be staged at a Nottingham's Lace Market Theatre. Director Linda Croston explains why...

Why Guys and Dolls?

It's acknowledged to be a masterpiece of musical theatre, because of its winning combination of a great plot, based on a prohibition era short story by Damon Runyan, and great songs. Premiered on Broadway in 1950, it somehow manages to be timeless. All the action takes place around Times Square, and although it seems to embody the quintessence of New York, it's been observed that it's not New York as it ever was, but rather as we wish it had been.

Why do audiences love it?

It's a show with heart. We warm to the characters. Most of the guys are gamblers who seem to do nothing but roll dice all night long, an activity regarded as vice by the police and sin by the local Salvation Army Mission. Most of the 'dolls' work at the Hot Box Nightclub or the Save-a Soul Mission.

We meet Nathan Detroit, an entrepreneurial, if not always successful, operator of dice games. His fiancée of 14 years, the Hot Box artiste Miss Adelaide, continues to hope that one day she will get him to the altar. Nathan lays a bet with the charming, suave Sky Masterson that he can persuade Sarah Brown, a prim Save-a-Soul Mission worker, to accompany him on a trip to Havana. How will things end for these four people?

Essentially it's a simple fable of life in the precarious world of small-time gamblers, and how love conquers all, or just about.

The Lace Market Theatre has never done Guys and Dolls before, and when we heard in early 2016 that it was going to be given a brief release for amateur performance - a rare event indeed – we jumped at the opportunity to secure it as the season finale for 2016/17.

How will you tackle your role as director?

Directing a musical is like managing any project. You have to bring all the different strands together at the right time. The difficulty with something like Guys and Dolls is that what begins as a relatively leisurely rehearsal process – actors saying their lines, and learning songs and dance routines – suddenly speeds up alarmingly as the opening night approaches and all the other elements of the show have to materialise around the actors.

These too have been planned and if possible prepared in advance, but all have to come together in the theatre during the last few weeks - the set, the lights, sound effects, props, costumes.

The Stage Manager appears, because now there's a stage to manage. Oh, and suddenly the keyboard used for music rehearsals is replaced by a band. The routine of those early rehearsals suddenly feels like a haven of peace compared to the constant juggling of different demands during the final weeks before the show.

I continue to do it because I just love musicals. And Guys and Dolls really is something special. Anticipating the audience's response to the funny, clever dialogue and the brilliant music, is after all, why any of us do it. For the audience.

Read the original article here.