Review: Guys and Dolls at Koorliny Arts Centre
Guys and Dolls at Koorliny Arts Centre
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Golden Age Tony-winning musical Guys and Dolls landed in suburban Perth this month, staged by Koorliny Arts Centre in collaboration with the City of Kwinana. This classic tale of two intersecting, complicated romances, mixed in with police and petty gangsters, religion and gambling, was a delightful way to spend a matinee Sunday afternoon.
Much of the plot took place over two or three days, primarily in midtown Manhattan, with the two major locations being a Salvation Army mission house, near empty most of the time, and The Hot Box cabaret club, full to the brim with so many sinners.
Small-scale con artist Nathan Detroit (Ben Mullings) had strung out a fourteen-year engagement with star of The Hot Box, Miss Adelaide (Jenelle Russo), while bigger-time gambler Sky Masterson (Lochlan Curtis) had his head suddenly turned by Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown (Hannah Charlotte). Combined with illegal gaming, police raids, and a day trip to pre-Castro Cuba, the frame of the piece came into view.
Charlotte and Curtis shared a convincing and sweet on-stage chemistry, sparked by their characters’ honest curiosity for each other, probably best highlighted with a wonderful montage-style tour of Havana towards the end of the first act. Charlotte’s graceful singing voice soared effortlessly throughout the theatre, easily the best showcased this afternoon—while the wider cast contained many strong voices, Charlotte’s was the definitive standout.
With the imagined weight of fourteen years, Mullings and Russo evinced a much more fragile duo, and their characters often appeared more interesting apart than together. Russo especially gave a sense of weary resignation, a thousand promises having become nine hundred disappointments, while Mullings constantly seemed one delayed moment from an actual win, and this unfulfilled release rebounded unhealthily back into the relationship.
Jamie Jewell and Jioji Nawanawa were Detroit’s sidekicks, Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet, respectively, giving much of the comic relief of the show, and were both fabulous in their acting and song.
The staging was efficient and clean, and the switch of furniture between scenes was organic and unhurried. A live band out of sight of the audience complemented the talent on stage, with languid horns and relaxed bass bringing to life a period-appropriate mix of jazz, big band, salsa and swing.
The costuming was an easy highlight, the men sharp in fedoras, suits, vests, and ties, the women with a colourful array of vintage-style dresses covered in a thousand polka dots. The fit of every piece was fantastic, with even the Salvation Army attire most flattering.
All songs were performed with verve and spirited energy, but two especially stood out: Curtis taking the lead with Luck Be A Lady, the concurrent dice game imagined as interpretive dance, while Jewell provided a barnstorming church revival-style rendition of Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat, as much of the rest of the cast danced in the literal pews.
What was surprising, for a property written in the late 1940s and based on short stories from the 1930s, was how fresh the premise felt. Whilst obviously a period piece from a 2025 vantage, the performance did not at all feel dated—rather vintage, perhaps even retro, with the underlying stories as eternal as any of Shakespeare’s. Indeed, from West Side Story through Ten Things I Hate About You and even to Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl, these classic tales have continually repeated and echoed across the decades.
Guys and Dolls, as brought to us by Koorliny today, was a loving postcard to a post-war, Atomic Age America about to confidently launch itself into rock and roll, the Space Race, and Vietnam—all these subjects so far back in today’s rearview that they almost seem to be beyond nostalgia.
A lovely afternoon spent with a cast, band, and backstage crew who immersed their audience in the smoke-filled speakeasies of the Rat Pack era, transported to a simpler place and time—the freshness and immediacy of the overall performance leaving that line perhaps the only cliché of the afternoon.
PAUL MEEK
