GUYS AND DOLLS Bridge, SE1

HYTNER ROLLS ANOTHER WINNING DICE

Daniel Mays has performed plenty of tough-guy roles however has by nature a fairly harmless and worried-looking face. It’s this high quality that Nick Hytner noticed as good for his Nathan Detroit: lowlife however hapless, indecisive in regards to the faff and price of marrying his tolerant fiancee of 14 years standing, Miss Adelaide (an irresistible Marisha Wallace). Excellent too is the exasperated however unbreakable chemistry between them: the Benedick and Beatrice of the Damon Runyon ‘20s-30’s world that Frank Loesser, Swerling and Burrows created. Sky Masterson (Andrew Richardson) is a extra suave leading-man half, although he’s deft at acrobatic comedian chaos when Sarah the Salvationist falls for his charms and a Bacardi-laced milkshake in a Havana nightclub punch-up (look, she had each cause to name time on his homoerotic dance with the chap in orange shorts). . Each pairs are a deal with, anyway, Dutch Celinde Schoemaker as Sarah additionally deploys, for an excellent soprano, a fantastic acrobatic recklessness.

Anyway, tip your hat and get down there, spend your winnings. It’s comedian perfection, sly wit and timing ,gently endearing performances, rumbustious knock ‘em lifeless choreography in each raunchy and hilarious modes. And naturally flawless musical numbers (I had forgotten that alongside nice barnstormers like Siddown and depraved comedy like Adelaide’s lament over the psychology handbook, there are beautiful lyrical numbers: not least “Extra I can’t want you”, gorgeously sung by Anthony o’Donnell’s Arvide.

However there’s one thing else: from the immersed surge of prommers on the ground to the crowded galleries above, the feedback as all of us raced for the final tubes earlier than the strike had been additionally in regards to the staging: Hytner directing one other bravura circus-mood splash from the matchlessly versatile Bridge. As in Julius Caesar and A Midaummer Evening’s Dream, promenaders can go for the ground and be immersive – some went the total Damon Runyon Nineteen Twenties cosplay, ladies in cocktail equipment and males made hat-brim debonair by the theatre’s suave sale of pork- pie hats within the melee earlier than the beginning.

So so as to add to the essential pleasure of a wonderfully executed musical, you get Bunny Christie creating the dream New York of outdated films, with rising blocks creating a number of phases and a forged flawlessly choreographed to be in the appropriate place at thirty seconds’ discover, operating from the cops, marching behind the Salvationist drum , showing in a instantly illuminated dive or rising, hat by trilby hat , from the manhole after the sewer scene. Nearly invisible stage crew transfer the viewers crowds safely round , streets and sidewalks rise and fall and divide: abruptly there may very well be a boxing ring, a cabaret, a bar, a roadworks…all the things all over the place unexpectedly. Sudden landmarks seem (the place did these Cuban lampposts come from, by no means noticed them arrive? and cling on, that chimney, smoking..if wobbling…and the way the helldid the mission corridor which wasn’t there a number of seconds in the past develop six rows of picket chairs? And hell, the Havana second, sparkles and feathers and flesh all over the place, what occurred to New York?

It will be a lovingly instructed story and superbly sung with none of this bravura, however we want dazzle too: life isn’t all Ibsen and Hare. And I’m completely happy to report that the stage crew bought their very own curtain name on one other rising block. All of us cheered. They get the uncommon stagecrew-mouse as an additional.

Bridgetheatre.co.uk. To 2 September

ranking. 5.