CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Guys and Dolls. From Damon Runyon. (Coliseum.)—The Uninvited Guest. By Mary Hayley Bell. (St. James's.)
THERE had been some doubt as to whether the Broadway production of Guys and Dolls would survive transatlantic transplantation, and a few severe critics in the gallery on the first night apparently con- sidered that it had not. Their standards must have been godlike indeed. A less exalted judgement would be that, all things con- sidered, it is by far the brightest 'and best of the American post-war Musical comedies to reach London ; and these in all conscience have set high enough standards. I admit that it may displease those who Imagine that sex is another nasty American invention, but perhaps they are rather a small minority.
Some aspects of the production are familiar : dancing of a superb vigour and discipline and expressiveness, as close to ballet as it is distant from the tired old routines • lively tunes embedded in a score itself unsmudged by the makeshift ; an intelligent (if not always quite intelligible—this being Runyonland) use of words ; the air of absolute conviction worn by players of the smallest parts ; and, above all, the vitality and whole-hearted enjoyment of the here and now which are the most agreeable features of American optimism. But Guys and Dolls differs from its predecessors in having an unusually strong foundation of comedy on which to elaborate, and a gallery of character and caricature which is itself a pleasure to contemplate. Runyon's personae translate easily to the stage and one's shock is of Pleasure only at seeing such worthies as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Harry the Horse, Nathan Detroit, Miss Adelaide, and Liver-Lips Louie in terms of flesh and blood. The story here is of the big-time gambler, Sky Masterson, who wins a bet by taking Sister Sarah of the Save-a-Soul Mission to dinner in Havana, but ends up, for his Pains, beating the drum in the mission band. Such is the power of Women. Likewise Miss Adelaide, the ." well-known fiancee," leads Nathan Detroit to the altar before the day is done.
While these conversions to harmless domesticity are in progress, others are attempted—and nothing is more amusing than the woeful March of the crap-shooters to a prayer-meeting at the Mission. At this point, on the second night, there occurred a grave breach of discipline. Nicely-Nicely Johnson had finished his big number, " Sit down, you're rockin' the boat," a brisk sort of spiritual, and the conductor was trying to get on with the show, when the audience broke into a rare storm of applause which did not abate until Stubby Kaye did it all over again. It is always good to see someone with third-degree billing received with first-degree appreciation. While one is on this subject, it may be said that Lizbeth Webb as Sister Sarah gives a performance no less pleasing than others more largely heralded. That observed, one may add that Sam Levene as Nathan Detroit, Vivian Blaine as Miss Adelaide, and Jerry Wayne as Sky Masterson could hardly be better. Miss Blaine with the chorus in " Take back your mink, take back your poils " is one vast delight. I have no idea what sort of correspondence, if any, Damon Runyon's Broadway has with the real thing, but the poetic comic truth is in no doubt, and this three-dimensional expansion of the printed page enfolds it wonderfully. The music and lyrics are by Frank Loesser ; dances by Michael Kidd ; setting by Jo Mielziner ; production by George S. Kaufman.
*
Mary Hayley Bell's new play is a disappointment. If one looks at the plot in the abstract, one sees a pale, modern and much diminished Oedipus emerging out of a background suggestive of Lady Chatterley's Lover. That sounds formidable and so it might be if the text itself did not exist solely on the flat level of naturalism and if its language were capable of bearing more meaning than that of humdrum give- and-take. The only value then is that of narrative, and the narrative on the naturalistic level can hardly escape absurdity As Candy, the unwanted son of Lady Lannion, John Mills wears la bright red Wig, gives a characteristic straight-faced performance, and comes nowhere near the tragic heights which his wife, Miss Bell, presumably had in mind for her leading character. His speeches, rich only in argument and explanation and expostulation, dragged like a ball- and-chain. No doubt it is nasty to return cured, at the age of thirty- four, from the home for defectives in which your mother shut you up when you were fourteen, discover that your father was other than you had supposed, and finally find yourself teetering on the brink of Byronesque incest—but all this was oddly unmoving. When Noel Thorne (Joan Greenwood) runs from the room immedi- ately before the final curtain-fall, one casually imagines the worst and without emotion writes finis to the bloodless story which has
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