My takeaway from seeing Guys & Dolls again today is: never return to a show via a matinée performance.

I wanted to go to the evening performance but my friend, who is visiting from Oz, said she had dinner plans, etc. and asked if we could go to the matinee.

As I’m sure the folks at Here Lies Love are well aware of, on their box office death spiral: an immersively staged show needs an audience on the floor to make it immersive. It’s not like there’s an alternative staging available for when, like today at the Bridge, there was probably less than 20% of the floor filled and that was mostly with zombie-eyed tourists, school boys and stage hands. The cast did a good job of playing to these people, coaxing them out of their shells, but it takes what in the best of circumstances is an inventive, dynamic staging and makes it seem more like something in the tradition of panto. The cast made the best of it - I’m sure, not for the 1st time - but there was a certain shrillness to some performances as they tried to go full throttle to make up for the deficit of an actual audience, out for a good time and loosened up by drinks, pre-show. They also seemed to cut a lot of the encores, understandably.

The big difference for me this time was seeing Andrew Richardson as Sky, since I saw his understudy (1st cover), George (Yorgos) Ioannides in July. (Because of the press Richardson received when the show opened in March, I was vaguely aware that he was out and Ioannides had, at that time, been covering him for weeks.) I wasn’t impressed. While Richardson is a strapping specimen of a man, it’s kind of like watching the high school jock join the drama club. He’s only a passable singer with an airiness to his voice that never quite locates a rich, resonant centre which makes his tone seem kind of thin. And since he mostly seems to be in love with himself, his delivery lacks any of the romanticism the role requires - not just in his feelings for Sarah but in the romantic notion that, through love, a gambler can be transformed into a missionary. He also plays Sky as a “character”, thick with a “Sopranos”-type goombah-ism that, of course, seems completely put on and unappealing both as the character and an actor. It’s like he’s playing somebody on top of playing somebody, commenting on a character rather than playing one. He never embodies Sky Masterson in any way, like he’s holding the character away from himself, very much like how a closet case does, but not in a knowing way.

I don’t mean to suggest that Mr. Richardson himself is closeted - I know nothing about him - but there’s an unease and limitation to what he seems capable of giving of himself to the role that just suggests he’s performing on top of a performance, and neither one feels very authentic, and authenticity is primarily what is required for Sky Masterson, who stands above all of the other gamblers with not only his ease and charm but with his sense of self and capacity to love. You can’t play Sky, you have to be him.

By contrast, his cover, Ioannides, while tight and smaller in stature (like a young DeNiro) and appealingly swarthy, was all ease and self-confidence with a beautiful voice who invested himself in the songs as if they were dramatic, revealing performances particularly My Time of Day which, in his hands, seemed like an invitation to real intimacy and in Richardson’s hands just seemed like a song he’s supposed to sing at the end of Act 1 of Guys and Dolls. With Ioannides, you knew Sarah Brown didn’t stand a chance when Sky first walks into the mission - and the actress’ performance acknowledged that. With Richardson, you kind of felt she could do better and she knew it too.

(cont.)