‘Guys and Dolls’ at the Stratford Festival takes a gamble by playing with perfection. Here's how it fares

Most directors know that if you absolutely must restage a show you’ve previously done, you’d better serve up a completely fresh vision. To present anything less—to offer anything that recalls what came before—will only invite cruel comparison.

But Donna Feore, as she’s proved time and again, is not like most directors. Why pave over perfection when you can tinker with it instead?

That’s exactly what she does with her latest revival of “Guys and Dolls,” which opened Tuesday at the Festival Theatre. In this latest staging, Feore has borrowed the blueprint from her 2017 production, cast new leads, and reimagined some key moments while tightening others.

Comparisons are inevitable, so let me get it out of the way: This “Guys and Dolls” is a jackpot winner that somehow — miraculously — improves on what was already a near-perfect staging nearly a decade ago.

It takes all but five minutes to witness the sheer genius and spectacle of Feore’s revival. In the musical’s opening sequence, the show begins entirely in monochrome, with Dana Osborne’s costumes all in various shades of black and white. Then, after the stage plunges into darkness, the lights rise a few seconds later to reveal a scene in dazzling technicolour. (Bonnie Beecher provides an assist with her ultra-precise lighting design.)

Seeing this coup de théâtre live is nothing short of breathtaking, no matter how many times you’ve witnessed it. (I guess this ought to be how moviegoers felt in 1939 when they saw “The Wizard of Oz” for the first time.)

The story of this revival can be told through this opening sequence. It was present in Feore’s previous staging, but in this revival it feels tauter, bolder and even more eye-popping than before.

From there, Feore goes on to brilliantly build the world of “Guys and Dolls.” The New York City of 1949 in this production pulses with lawlessness: the guys slink around in the shadows while the dolls strut about in their heels on Michael Gianfrancesco’s versatile sets, framed with an array of neon signs on the stage’s back wall.

In Mark Uhre, Jennifer Rider-Shaw, Dan Chameroy and Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane, Feore has found an exceptional quartet of lead performers.

As Nathan Detroit, the flustered crap game organizer who’s always in a pickle, stuck between pleasing his clients and his fed-up fiancée of 14 years, Miss Adelaide (Rider-Shaw, finding new comic shades to the role with her exaggerated mannerisms), Uhre offers one of the funniest takes on the part that I’ve seen yet.

And as Sky Masterson, whom Nathan engages in a desperate bet against, wagering the gambler can’t woo the pious missionary Sarah Brown (Sinclair-Brisbane) on a Cuban escapade, Chameroy delivers an impressively earnest performance, served up with some suave swagger that only a sleazy crapshooter can possess.

Feore’s distinct directorial touch is all over this production. She uses the Festival Theatre’s thrust to her advantage: quieter scenes with only two actors are rendered with extraordinary intimacy, while larger, ensemble moments explode on the stage. Most striking of all is her mind-blowing, second-act “Crapshooters Ballet,” the acrobatic dance number taking place in the sewers under Manhattan, filled with mid-air somersaults and flips across the stage. (Ensemble member Devon Michael Brown is impressive as ever, leading this number.) 

But Feore’s talent lies not just in her ability to conjure grand spectacle. She also manages — quietly and quite slyly — to update Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows’ book, and fix some of the musical’s rather dated gender stereotypes, while changing little of the original material.  

Sinclair-Brisbane’s Sarah Brown may initially present as quiet and pious, but that doesn’t mean she can’t also be fiercely independent, as she displays in this revival’s sultry “Havana” scene. Similarly, Rider-Shaw’s Miss Adelaide is especially headstrong in Feore’s production compared with the men, who are far more fickle (and, arguably, weaker) in temperament. 

These small, subversive updates of having the women really in control were already present in 2017. But Feore underscores these changes even further in this latest production by casting a woman, Nehassaiu deGannes, as Lt. Brannigan, the stern, no-nonsense officer constantly nipping at the gamblers’ heels.

The music-making, as you’d expect from any Stratford musical, is top-notch and well balanced with Haley Parcher’s sound design.

Steve Ross, reprising his turn as the sweet-talking Nicely-Nicely Johnson, gets to unleash his strong vocals in the 11 o’clock number “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat.” Longtime ensemble member Gabriel Antonacci, in the smaller role of Benny Southstreet, also has several moments to showcase his fine voice. And in the orchestra loft, the Stratford Festival orchestra under the direction of conductor Franklin Brasz breathe glorious life into Frank Loesser’s score with a brilliant, big band sound.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a stronger production of “Guys and Dolls” than this. Some may argue there’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to the arts. Pfft, I say. Go see this revival and eat your words.