Full casting has been announced for Carnegie Hall's one-off concert performance of Guys and Dolls on April 3 at 7:30 p.m. And, following in the well-established tradition of classically-inflected musical theater concerts, the line-up is stellar.
Nathan Lane headlines as Nathan Detroit (well, they share the same first name so that makes sense). It's a role he played in a famous Jerry Zaks-directed Broadway production back in 1992. Patrick Wilson joins him as Sky Masterson (Wilson is well-versed in musicals including the Phantom of the Opera movie). Len Cariou, creator of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, is luxury casting as aged Arvide. Megan Mullally, best-known from the television comedy Will and Grace, plays Miss Adelaide--a role she was first mooted to play opposite Ewan MacGregor a decade ago (though in the event she didn't after all join that production). Sarah Brown is Andrew Lloyd Webber favorite Sierra Boggess (she created the role of Christine in the fine Phantom sequel Love Never Dies).
The Orchestra of St. Luke's will be conducted by Rob Fisher. Director for the occasion will be Jak O'Brien, another top-notch name who worked with Boggess on Love Never Dies and is currently said to be attached to the forthcoming Stephen Schwartz musical on Houdini.
It will be interesting to see how Frank Loesser's masterpiece works at Carnegie. It's telling that the cast is drawn from the musicals world--no Bryn Terfel or Thomas Hampson here. But then it is Loesser's other, though lesser-known, great show, The Most Happy Fella, that is closer to the classical world. Guys and Dolls is folk- and jazz-inflected. Yet the choice of a somewhat smaller orchestra rather than, say, the New York Philharmonic is a clever one. There is real intricacy and deftness in the scoring, and it will be fascinating to hear what an orchestra used to playing Mozart can mine from it.
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