Old School musical just the prescription for 21st century blues

Review • Portland Center Stage rolls a winner with 'Guys and Dolls'

By Eric Bartels

The Portland Tribune, Sep 29, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

The proprietor of the oldest floating crap game in New York, Nathan Detroit (John Plumpis), gets a kick out of his job while his lieutenants Nicely-Nicely (Todd Horman, left) and Benny Southstreet (Leif Norby, right) get a kick out of him in “Guys and Dolls.”

© Owen Carey

At the time Portland Center Stage scheduled the musical “Guys and Dolls” to lead off its new season, its brain trust could hardly have known what kind of mood its audience would be in on opening night.

Certainly, it could not have guessed that the American economy would be on the edge of cataclysm, the latest in a series of national setbacks that finds many of us with a creeping sense of dull helplessness.

The good news is that a piece of musical theater that might’ve looked like a welterweight workout in nostalgia until recently suddenly has new life as an invigorating tonic to folks with worries on the mind.

Remember, musicals helped get us through the Depression.

Center Stage’s revival of the high school drama department staple is a delight. The high-energy tale of guys looking for a floating crap game in pre-war New York – and the dolls that would like to see them straighten up and fly right – is ostensibly a period piece.

It may have premiered in 1950, but the musical actually was based on colorful Damon Runyan stories that dated back to the ’30s, and director Chris Coleman makes a decision to go there.

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