Viewing page 11 of 37

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[pull quote]] Casting Guys and Dolls correctly took one year and two coasts to accomplish. Even the choreographer auditioned. [[/pull quote]]

the best kinds of love stories. One is unlikely: a gambler and a mission worker. In their first scene she ends up hitting him because he is an insult to her dignity. He just went in there to win a bet, period - and, all of a sudden, something happens. It's exciting because it's unlikely. On the other hand, you've got another love story of somebody who has been putting off this dear woman for 14 years. Being the epitome of patience and good will, she keeps reminding him it has been 14 years, and he's saying, 'Let's not jump into it like it was a kettle of fish.'"

Casting the piece correctly has taken Zaks one year and two coasts to accomplish. "It's a rare actor who can sing with conviction and beauty and still have the capacity to act credibly with the size that this demands," he contends. "It's almost an operatic kind of acting. I don't believe there are that many actors who can do that. It's a tall order. What would happen would be that someone would come in and sing the part magnificently, then not be able to act - and the show won't tolerate that. Hopefully, a little bubble is triggered when the show begins that can't ever be dropped. It can't be dropped when people are singing or acting or dancing, and the potential for it being dropped is there all of the time.

"I love actors who mean what they say, who have credibility, who can act with will and purpose as though they had something at stake in communications with the other guy. When you've got a group of actors who know how to do that - who aren't counting their own laughs - then you're home safe."

For Nathan Lane and Faith Prince the subplot comedy of Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide was déja vu since both had warmed up the roles with previous productions - Lane in a New Jersey dinner theatre version in 1977, Prince for a Seattle Rep edition in 1985.

[[image: black and white photo of a scene from Guys and Dolls]]
[[credit]] MARTHA SWOPE [[/credit]]
[[caption]] Steve Ryan (center) flanked by comic con-men Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Herschel Sparber [[/caption]]

20
[[end page]]
[[start page]]

Also, the two had crossed paths onstage before, quite agreeably, in a Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Bad Habits. "The chemistry between us," says Prince, "is like that Classic Couples thing, whatever that Ralph-and-Alice thing is - but gentler. I think Nathan and Adelaide are just a little gentler with each other. We just click."

The main difference about her new reprise of Miss Adelaide, "the well-known fiancee," is in her private life: On Jan. 3, she ended her own long engagement (of four years) to trumpeter Larry Lunetta - in marriage. "Thought I'd better accomplish that before doing Adelaide. Might be too much to take."

Lane has undergone a change of name himself since he first did the show 15 years ago. He previously played the part under his real name, Joe Lane, but Actors' Equity already had one of those on its rolls, "so I took Nathan because I loved the part so."

He feels his new Nathan is different in other ways. "Whoever I am now, I'll bring new things to it. Jerry, overall, went a little younger in terms of the cast and took a fresh approach to it, just as if it were a brand-new show."

Case-in-point occurs a couple of notches down in the cast: Walter Bobbie is a positively svelte Nicely-Nicely Johnson compared to previous Broadway impersonators of the part (Stubby Kaye and Ken Page. "I was surprised Jerry wanted me for the part - thrilled, of course - but it was his idea," admits Bobbie. "Before I came in he sent notes through my agent, telling me to forget everything I knew about the part and to just come in and do it. He said, 'It has nothing to do with fat,' and he didn't want me to play it stupid."

It doesn't bother him a bit that he is battling memories of all those heavyweights who've rocked the boat before him - but says fellow Guys and Dolls actor J. K. Simmons, who plays Benny Southstreet, "It probably bothers the fat guys who didn't get the job."

Choreographers got the same sort of fine tuning. Five or six auditioned for Zaks, staging (in a somewhat unprecedented request) production numbers.

The winner, an actor-dancer lately turned choreographer named Christopher Chadman, danced in a dozen Broadway shows (including the title role in the last go-around of Pal Joey) but never before in Guys and Dolls.

"Which was good: I came to it fresh, with no preconceived idea," he say. I just wanted to with my heart."

John Hart, whose Kardana Productions is situated right across the hall from Dodger Productions, also went with his heart, throwing his hat (and moneybags) into the production pile after he spotted the perfect Sky Masterson - literally in the sky: "I was on a plane back from L.A. with Peter Gallagher, who was coming in to audition for Cameron Mackintosh for a musical. I said, 'Why, Peter, I didn't know you sang.' He said, 'I'm a singer first, actor, then dancer.' He put it in that order. I didn't believe him, and he said, 'Get The Idolmaker.' Well, I got the video and flipped. I went right to Dodger and recommended him. Then he went to Jerry and auditioned and got the part."

Gallagher, whose last Broadway musical was A Doll's Life a decade back (Grease and Hair before that), is Sky-high with happiness over his new role: "I honestly feel like the luckiest man in the world to be playing this role, singing these songs, doing these scenes. The scenes support a kind of truth. When words fail in these scenes, a song comes in. It comes in - not to show anybody off, how great they sing or how great the orchestra sounds - but to tell the story. It's all so seamless.

"Jerry calls this the crown jewel of the American musical theatre, and I think it is. I've never known something where the issues are so recognizable. These are real men and real women, and the spectacular heightened-reality of Runyonland and gives us the distance to participate in that experience. When we tell this story truthfully, amid this wash of color, we rediscover why this show just stayed and stayed and stayed."