It’s best not to overthink updated ‘Guys & Dolls’
Attempt to infuse the production with ‘Latin flair’ has mixed results
In a 60-second explainer before the show begins at Theatre Under The Stars, artistic director Dan Knechtges tells the audience that he’s proud to present an updated version of the 1950 musical “Guys & Dolls.” They’ve added a “Latin flair,” he says, presumably to, A), show the younger audiences that a 68-yearold story — that’s past retirement age, mind you — can still be resuscitated for the Netflix generation, and to, B), warn the traditionalists about the brown people with accents.
The production features Latino performers in nearly all major roles. The high-energy, highhilarity Michelle Aravena plays Adelaide, and the silky Omar Lopez-Cepero stars as Sky Masterson. It’s hard to tell whether the actors chose to speak with accents or were told by a director to do so. And the “Latin flair,” so to speak, oscillates between being a grating, overzealous attempt at fashionable diversity and
a rare opportunity to see nonwhite performers express the kind of sexuality, complexity, humor and agency rarely (almost never) granted to them during Broadway’s Golden Age.
In other words, the cheesy insertion of spontaneous Spanish and over-enunciated accents only works because “Guys & Dolls” is supposed to be cheesy. One doesn’t have to think about the possibility that the Latino performers here are poster children for TUTS, whose administration and board of directors are white as Wonder Bread. One doesn’t have to think at all. Everyone here is a bit of a cardboard cutout, and they lean into the cartoonish élan of classic Broadway so much that none of the silliness need feel racialized. No one’s a minstrel when everyone — Anglos and Latinos, guys and dolls — flaps around like puppets.
Lopez-Cepero’s chemistry with Madison Claire Parks, who plays the uptight missionary Sarah Brown, is irrefutable. Sarah and Sky’s romance was presented in 1950 as an undermining of traditional pairings. The criminal getting with the missionary transcended boundaries of class and decency. Today, it reeks of cliché only because so many future stories copied the Sarah/Sky dynamic, including an array of romcom movies about bad boys making a bet to go out with the buttonedup girl, then accidentally falling in love with her.
Here, the interracial dynamic is sly but potent. Because Sky was written to be white, he’s the kind of leading man that Latino, Asian and black characters rarely get to be — something more than a “minority” role. LopezCepero’s presence is sexy, funny, fun, delightful and, most important of all, natural. His character has none of the fearful asexuality of “The King and I,” nor the fetishistic undertones of “Memphis” or “Hairspray.”
Lopez-Cepero couldn’t have pulled it off without Parks matching his seductive energy. Parks has a classical, vibrato-heavy voice that matches the golden-era appeal of “Guys & Dolls,” while her acting has modern nuance written all over it. The issue of gender feels more challenging than race here, and Parks’ performance is symbolic of the “old versus new” dynamic plaguing the entire musical. Of course “Guys & Dolls” feels sexist and creepy. Of course Adelaide still gets sick — read: hysteria — when she fails to get a husband. Of course “A Bushel and a Peck” is still “A Bushel and a Peck.”
But Parks counters the 1950s-era script by playing a woman who’s in control of her situation. When two men conspire to secretly get Sarah drunk in Havana, Parks convinces us that Sarah knew what they were doing and that she was OK with it. When Sky admits to Sarah that his seduction was a lie and that he only used her to win a bet, Parks lowers her voice and betrays a sly smile. Tricking women into bed isn’t funny, but what if she was tricking him? The actor makes us believe everything’s OK, and gives the slick betting man an even slicker comeback: “How else would a girl get to meet a gambler?”