Lady Luck Rolls Again

IT TAKES either Chutzpah or childlike innocence to put on a production of Guys and Dolls. After all, this is in many ways the greatgranddaddy of American musicals and it's been performed more times by more varied casts--from summer camps to Broadway revivals--than any other play in the last 30 years. In the case of Leverett House's current production, it would seem that it was chutzpah that provided the moving spirit.

And rightly so. Guys and Dolls is one hell of a lot of fun to produce, and those ever-enterprising Leverett folks have managed to assemble one of the biggest aggregations of Harvard theater talent in recent memory on the tiny Old Library stage. As with most musicals, strong leads almost always guarantee success with this show; this production has them, plus an energetic if necessarily small cast. And most of all, director Leo-Pierre Roy has what you call your can't miss show, and that's where the chutzpah comes in.

Chutzpah, it must be added, also applies to the people who planned Leverett's outrageous ticket prices and show schedule. Inflation may be rampant, but charging $3 for a House show is absurd and almost menacing--sort of like Chase Manhattan raising the prime lending rate to 15 per cent overnight. And the schedule, which calls for two shows on one night for each of the three-week run, is almost as bad as asking a pitcher to start both ends of a doubleheader. The show runs a whopping two hours and forty-five minutes, and asking any cast to do that twice in a night is pushing matters.

Assorted money-grubbing cavils aside, though, this production of Guys and Dolls has consistent quality. It can be argued, of course, that it is virtually impossible to mess up this play, blessed as it is with a tremendous score, a witty script that only now begins to show signs of wear, and a story so ingrained in the American conciousness all a director need do, it seems, is hand out the scripts and smile a lot. As these converted Damon Runyon fables are so tamiliar to anyone who has ever been involved in musical theater, there's no point in rehashing the plot here. If you don't know the story, well, go see this show.

Although Guys and Dolls, when done right, features a cast filled with amiable sidekicks, the leads must carry the show, for they have the bulk of the dialogue, not to mention the songs. In this production, happily, one of the four leads is flawless and the other three are perfectly adequate or better. Crystal Terry, as Adelaide, the faithful and dumb eternal fiancee, provides the best musical performance I have seen at Harvard. Terry boasts a marvelous voice and uncannily sharp timing--and can dance, too. All these talents, combined with her formidable stage presence, make for a great job here; we can only hope for more soon.

Cornelia Ravenal plays the other lead--missionary Sarah Brown--with a style the usually works but occasionaly grates. Her dialogue is fine, but her singing becomes marred by a series of repeated gestures and tricks that would probably go over on a big stage--say, the Loeb--but look strange on the puny Leverett platform. Ravenal's voice, a pretty, clear soprano, becomes obscured now and then by some Eydie-Gorme-esque whispers, ostensibly for emphasis, and a tendency to park and remain planted in one spot for the duration of a song, much like a 50-mm. cannon. Still, these are minor and seemingly alterable flaws; on the whole, Ravenal's Sarah is an asset to the production.

The same goes for Paris K.C. Barklay's rendition of Sky Masterson, macho gambler extraordinaire. Barclay moves through his scenes with an understated panache, rolling off his smooth-man lines with obvious enjoyment. Unfortunately, last Saturday Barclay's fine voice was muted by laryngitis or a similar malady; rendering his songs--particularly his otherwise impeccable "Luck Be a Lady"--just a bit too soft.

The fourth lead, David Levi as Nathan Detroit, is the weakest of the four, but still manages to fill the bill. Nathan should be played somewhere along the line between macho and henpecked-neurotic, the way Sam Levene created the character in the original back in '47. Levi has a nice voice, but it doesn't help much; Nathan doesn't have to sing very often. His characterization seems somehow too neurotic, too much mama's boy and not quite enough swagger for the proprietor of a floating crap game. But he's funny. They're all funny, or at least funny enough.

THEN COMES the fine supporting cast, all of whom perform up to expectations. Most House shows would be hard pressed to come up with leads as good as this supporting cast: Shipley Munson and David Frutkoff form a fine duo as Nathan's sidekicks, and their rendition of the title song is as good as any. Among the others, Jim Mulqueeny, Michael der Manuelian, Kerry Konrad and Marc Johnson strut their stuff with authority.

The only major problem with this Guys and Dolls stems from the extreme physical limitations of Leverett's Old Library. This is quite definitely a big-stage musical, and the overly cozy location really hurts. Given those limitations, and some unforseen technical problems, the crew did the best it could. Often their best left a great deal to be desired. The set seems comically tacky at times, particularly in the big sewer scene in Act Two, when three gamblers have to carry flats in with them from the wings, while somehow negotiating the three "Death Ramps" that provide access to the stage. Still, it doesn't really matter. They're good. They're all good, or at least good enough.

This is a can't-miss production. Like the man says: satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Or is it? If they'll charge three bucks and work the actors to death, they might not give you your money back. But then again, you probably won't want it back. In this Guys and Dolls, as with every other one produced by reasonably talented people, you know what you're going to get. And you get it.