“Guys and Dolls”, Frank Loesser’s evergreen 1950 musical about soft-centred New York low-lifes, returns in a fizzy new staging at the Savoy Theatre - and the unapologetic escapism couldn’t be more welcome.Top of the list of pleasures is Sophie Thompson in the role of the lovelorn doormat Miss Adelaide, a chanteuse who has been waiting fourteen years for her non-committal boyfriend Nathan to tie the knot. She performs the role hunched over, as if weighed down by her sorrows, but with a joyously innocent desperation which makes you long to pick her up and hug her. She grimly lowers her voice to deliver punchlines, and every one of them hits the funny bone with a satisfying thwack. “I don’t mind if you forget to give me a present, Nathan. [Pause] It makes me feel like we were already married.”She has the best singing chops on stage too, and can vary her sound from a Broadway belt to a sweet high soprano in a beat. And on top of that, she digs under all the comic exaggerations of the role to find moments of real pathos. When she recognises the futility of her cheap delusions in the reprise of “Adelaide’s Lament” she plays for pain, not laughs. Paradoxically, it’s a moment of comic genius.David Haig is terrific too as the weasely-but-likeable Nathan, whose need to find a thousand dollars to hire a location for his “oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York” is the motor which drives the plot. He’s matched by dreamboat baritone Jamie Parker, who plays the dashing gambler Sky Masterson with an irresistible vim and verve perfect for a romantic lead, and who sings up a storm.Gordon Greenberg creates a pacy and efficient production (a London transfer from the Chichester Festival Theatre) which works wonders on a limited budget. With only a few props and some simple slide-on-slide-off truck sets he whizzes us from a rundown Salvation Army mission on Broadway to the sewers of New York via a quick stop in Cuba. (Sets Peter McKintosh.) Quibbles? If you want to nit-pick, you might think that Siubhan Harrison hasn’t got the ease of voice for Sarah Brown, the uptight Salvation Army officer who falls for the wayward charms of the rakish Sky, and that she sounds strained in her upper register. The choreography, by Carlos Acosta and Andrew Wright, has plenty of energy but lacks narrative drive, and the crucial fight sequence in Havana is a tad messy.But conductor Gareth Valentine keeps it everything hot and spicy in the pit, and his superb arrangements for the dance sequences are a delight: the quote of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Cygnets” to accompany four burly gangsters is an inspired touch. By the time we get to the show-stopping “Sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat” any quibbles are swept away by a tsunami of feelgood energy which powers on to the end of the show.Who needs hard-hitting? Give me escapism any day.“Guys and Dolls” is at the Savoy Theatre
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