Guys and Dolls Concert at Royal Albert Hall

The Guys and Dolls concert at Royal Albert Hall promised to be a brilliant event, an A list cast, the thirty one piece Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, the wonderful cavernous amphitheatre and the delightful music and lyrics of Frank Loesser. Yet it somehow fell short in delivering what I regard as one of the greatest Musical theatre pieces ever written. The memory of Richard Eyre’s 1982 glorious NT production and Michael Grandage’s enjoyable 2005 revival hung over this concert version and it failed to reach the level that the recent excellent Camelot concert at the London Palladium reached. This is at least in part due to the venue itself which tended to dominate the whole evening as the performers sang before the huge organ pipes and sitting in row 11 of the stalls  (£70 seat) seemed to be one hundred metre from the stage. You almost wished for a TV screen to see the faces of the cast!

However the wonderful score did fill the venue especially during the overture which swirled around the roof space and occasionally the choreography and performances brought the concert to life as in Adelaide’s Bushel and a Peck, a fabulous Luck be a lady dance routine using two levels of the stage and the show stopping Nicely Nicely Johnson’s (played by the wonderful Clive Rowe) Sit down, you’re rocking the boat. In these well produced numbers the stage filled and focused our attention down to the performances. At other times the performers looked lost in the vast stage.

The other drawback of this style of presentation, neatly avoided by the Camelot Concert was the story telling and character development with just three days of rehearsal. The narrator, the talented Stephen Mangan, did not have a witty damonesque enough script to work with and the performers although they did use New York accents never got a chance to perform the songs as anything but themselves.

The big success of the night is the cabaret artiste Meow Meow as the hot box girl Miss Adelaide; she was perfectly cast, used the stage well and provided most of the best comedy moments in her business and songs as she tottered around the stage in her outrageous costumes and large wig.  Musical Theatre specialists like Lara Pulver as Sarah Brown stood out especially in If I were a bell and I’ve never been in love before and Paul Nicholas as Arvide Abernathy in sweet lament More I cannot wish you.

Jason Manford as Nathan and Adrian Lester Sky Masterson showed they can both hold a tune in Sue me and Luck be a lady respectively but seemed to be well within their full capabilities and I feel would have shown more with more rehearsal and a more intimate staging. The amazing Sharon D Clarke as General Cartwiright was wasted in the limited singing role so we never really heard her powerful voice. There was a nice cameo from Sevan Stephan as Big Jule.

These concert versions are an excellent way of refreshing interest in the classic musicals and giving performers a chance to shine with limited time commitment but to fill the vast Albert Hall more is needed as in the Showboat staging referred to in the rather expensive £10 programme. Nevertheless the large audience seemed to enjoy the experience and gave it a rapturous response and I hope neither the producers nor the performers will be put off from doing another musical concert in 2019.

Nick Wayne

Three stars.