When Aspire Community Theatre approached Thomas Gandy about directing the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, he made them a counteroffer instead.
"I said, 'Well, I see you're doing Guys and Dolls. If you don't have anybody for it, I'd rather do that."
To pass up Sondheim's modern riff on Brothers Grimm fairy tales in favor of a Golden Age chestnut from the 1950s might strike some directors as a missed opportunity. But Gandy already had a solid fix on what he wanted from a musical based on the humorous stories of Damon Runyon, a writer with a style so singular that it spawned its own adjective: Runyonesque.
"Guys and Dolls is so over-the-top, all these kooky characters. I thought, what better opportunity to try and take an old-style, Hollywood-picture-slash-Broadway show and do a revival where we're not trying to modernize it. I'm actually trying to do the opposite," Gandy says.
"If the normal person's emotional range on any given day operates between a four and a six, these people operate between a two and an eight. Everything is bigger."
Under his direction, the Guy and Dolls that opens this weekend at Coeur d'Alene's Salvation Army Kroc Center will revel in what Gandy calls the "cartoony and campy" vibe of Runyon's picaresque tales of gamblers and hustlers in Prohibition- and Depression-era New York.
As a movie buff and the grandchild of a Hollywood art director, Gandy also wants to pay homage to the screen. His conception of Guys and Dolls takes certain cues from the 1955 film adaptation starring Vivian Blaine, Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Frank Sinatra, and when he discusses the guidance he's giving to his actors, it's full of film and TV references.
One on-stage relationship, he told his cast, should have a similar flavor to the interactions between Star Wars' R2D2 and C3PO. The core trio of gamblers — Nicely-Nicely Johnson (played by Nick Lyons), Benny Southstreet (James Wigdahl) and Rusty Charlie (Abel Siemens) — should channel aspects of The Three Stooges. And when it comes to double takes, he doesn't rule out the exaggerated qualities of "the Scooby-Doo reaction."
His decisions on pacing might owe more to Hollywood than Broadway, too.
"I'm really just trying to take that cinematic approach of tightness and storytelling and then apply that. I want this to move like a feature film. I don't want any dead spots. I want it to feel as busy as a New York street."
But that doesn't mean this production is being glib with its source material. Gandy's reasoning is that, by leaning into its madcap qualities, Guys and Dolls becomes truer to itself and the world it depicts.
"This show has to be grounded in a reality that doesn't exist," he says. "With that, what needs to happen is that everybody needs to be on board because the audience has to know it's deliberate and loving."
Guys and Dolls is built around two parallel love stories. Charming risk-taker Sky Masterson (played by Duncan Clark Menzies) is pursuing prudish Sarah Brown (Sarah Noble) while the hapless schemer Nathan Detroit (Jeffrey Parsons) and showgirl Miss Adelaide (Annabelle Brasch) work through their sense of commitment to one another.
Menzies is a Coeur d'Alene-based interdisciplinary conceptual artist who's been involved with the Drawn Together Arts series at the Art Spirit Gallery as well as regional productions of Falsettos and West Side Story.
"I don't want any dead spots. I want it to feel as busy as a New York street."
"There's lots of things I can sink my teeth into," he says of his lead role. "It's been cool to explore [Sky] as the epitome of this really suave, masculine guy, but deep down there's tenderness."
Noble says that her prim, moralizing character in Guys and Dolls is a fun departure from the "hyperfeminine" and "glamorous" roles she's had in the past — Tanya in Mamma Mia! being the most recent example. And despite sharing a first name with Sarah Brown, Noble says she's more "spunky" in real life than her onstage persona. Those differences have manifested themselves in unusual ways, like footwear.
"I wear a lot of boots. And for a lot of my other shows, I've worn stilettos. I'm used to the gliding nature of heels in those roles. So at first it was a little hard to really get into the more structured way that [Sarah Brown] walks," she explains. To better settle into the character, she's been coming to rehearsals wearing her character's more old-fashioned flats.
There is, however, one key scene where Sarah — both character and actor — is able to let loose, and that's when Sky flies her down to Havana for an evening getaway. After sipping on an unfamiliar Cuban beverage, her inhibitions fall away, and she sings her bubbly solo "If I Were a Bell."
That scene marks a turning point for their characters that Gandy says is central to the story of love, respect and compromise that Guys and Dolls is trying to tell. And, fittingly, he references another stage-to-screen musical to make the point.
"This is [like] Grease, right? You have two people from very different worlds. Ultimately, one tightens up, and one lightens up." ♦
Guys and Dolls • April 25-May 4; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 pm • $23-$29 • Salvation Army Kroc Center • 1765 W. Golf Course Rd., Coeur d'Alene • aspirecda.com • 208-696-4228
