TT: Dull guys, hot dolls

I’m on and off Broadway in today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, in which I review Des McAnuff’s revival of Guys and Dolls and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Distracted, a new play by Lisa Loomer. Here’s an excerpt.
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Never underestimate the power of a director to louse up a good show. That’s what Des McAnuff has done to “Guys and Dolls,” a pop-culture masterwork so bulletproof that it’s never failed to make its effect, even when performed by amateurs–until now. Mr. McAnuff, the director of “Jersey Boys,” has taken Frank Loesser’s timeless tale of New York in the ’30s and turned it into a shrink-wrapped, over-designed piece of high-dollar plastic that belongs in a warm-weather theme park, not on Broadway….
Mr. McAnuff and his collaborators seem not to have realized that there’s nothing stale about Loesser’s raffish songs or Abe Burrows’ wisecrack-studded book. All you have to do is perform them with the same hard-nosed punch that you can hear on the original-cast album of George S. Kaufman’s 1950 production and you’ve got yourself a hit. That punch is what’s missing from this revival, and in particular from most of the men in the cast. It’s as though none of them had ever seen a Jimmy Cagney movie….
The women come off much better, especially Lauren Graham, who is making her Broadway debut as Adelaide, the hapless chorus girl who’s been engaged to Nathan for 14 years. Ms. Graham, lately of “Gilmore Girls,” is a musical-comedy newcomer, but you couldn’t tell it by her work in “Guys and Dolls.” Not only is she a terrific singer, but but she plays Adelaide with a rueful, leggy charm that is wholly endearing…
Lisa Loomer made a well-deserved splash six years ago with “Living Out,” an impressively intelligent dramedy about an impeccably liberal entertainment lawyer who hires an illegal immigrant from El Salvador to tend her newborn child. Then Ms. Loomer dropped off the scope, much to my dismay. Now she’s back in town with the New York premiere of “Distracted,” another sharp-toothed satire set in upper-middle-class suburbia. In “Distracted” Cynthia Nixon and Josh Stamberg play the parents of Jesse (Matthew Gumley), a bright, energetic child of nine whose inappropriate behavior in the classroom and at home causes him to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Appalled by the possibility that Jesse might need to be put on Ritalin, the amphetamine-like stimulant that is widely prescribed for children suffering from ADD, they embark on a desperate search for a more palatable alternative to drug therapy, one so frenzied that they find themselves spending more time with doctors than with their increasingly unhappy boy….
“Distracted” isn’t nearly as taut or disciplined a piece of work as “Living Out.” It’s journalistic to a fault–the characters are forever telling us interesting things about ADD instead of interacting with one another–and it also succumbs at annoyingly frequent intervals to the kind of self-conscious humor that makes you wonder whether Ms. Loomer lacks confidence in her ability to hold an audience’s attention by being serious. And while it’s easy to see what she’s trying to do by cramming “Distracted” full of fast-paced dialogue, the play’s hectic pace makes it seem longer than it really is. Especially during the first act, I kept wanting to nudge the author in the ribs and say, “O.K., O.K., we get it already! Let’s move on!”
On the other hand, “Distracted” is also smart, funny and genuinely felt, and Mark Brokaw, the director, keeps the action flying by so fast that the weaker parts of the script are gone almost before you know it….
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Read the whole thing here.
This is my Wall Street Journal video review of Guys and Dolls: