San Diego Musical Theatre made an impressive debut last year with a first-rate local premiere of "The Full Monty" at the Birch North Park Theatre. While their current production of Frank Loesser's 1950 musical "Guys and Dolls" has much to recommend it, its unorthodox approach to the classic, usually outsized musical comedy fails to live up to the new company's earlier promise.

The organization's move from the 730-seat venue in North Park to the 1100+ capacity of El Cajon's East County Performing Arts Center doesn't help things, either, as the few hundred at Friday's performance made for a regrettably small opening night audience in such a large auditorium.

Small house or not, though, the 32-member cast seemed to give it their all. On the plus side, the production boasts fine singers and actors in the leads and some electric dancing by the large, talented ensemble. Director and choreographer Troy Magino's taut staging of the "Crapshooters' Dance" pays tribute to the work of original choreographer Michael Kidd (who passed away last month after a long, illustrious career), and features some of the best male dancers to be seen in the local theatre scene, short of the Broadway-bound blockbusters that La Jolla Playhouse and the Globe send off every year. And Loesser's indefatigable score, played by a 14-piece orchestra led by musical director Don LeMaster, still ranks among the best of them.

Jamie Torcellini and Terra C. Macleod

Copyright©2008 Jared Bauman

Magino's production as a whole, though, seems to be striving for an almost depressingly realistic style that just doesn't work in a Golden Age "musical fable of Broadway" based on Damon Runyon. Runyon's characters, after all, are some of the most colorful ever created, New York underworld types with larger-than-life personalities and names like Liver Lips Louie, Tobias the Terrible, and Society Max. Everything here just seems stifled, and the pacing of much of Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows' dialogue is hesitant when it should be snappy. It's telling that the two hour and forty-five minute show doesn't really get started until Miss Adelaide (Terra C. MacLeod) jumpstarts it into gear with the boisterous club number, "A Bushel and a Peck," a good forty minutes into the evening. MacLeod, seen here last year at the Civic as that icy merry murderess Velma Kelly in the national tour of "Chicago," proves herself the consummate leading lady yet again, and nails the comic "Adelaide's Lament." She's well-matched by Jamie Torcellini as her fiancé of fourteen years Nathan Detroit, and the pair's "Sue Me" is a gem, but elsewhere one wishes for more of the clowning that made his turn as sprightly Bill Snibson in last year's "Me and My Girl" so memorable. Instead, the two most vibrant characters in the show are played, for the most part, rather straightforwardly.

Robert J. Townsend and Amy Biedel

Copyright©2008 Jared Bauman

So straightforwardly, in fact, that as the slightly less colorful couple of gambler Sky Masterson and missionary girl Sarah Brown, Robert J. Townsend and Amy Biedel come across as about as interesting as glue, despite their glorious voices. Even the reckless tipsy abandon of "If I Were a Bell" and the underlying sense of danger in "Luck Be a Lady" are, as Runyon himself might have said, more than somewhat missing.

The casting of the tall, gangly Jason Maddy is a nice departure from the short and portly Nicely-Nicely Johnsons popularized by Stubby Kaye of the original Broadway and film casts -- Runyon himself described the character as thin -- and his and Benny's (Eric Vest) energetic delivery of the title number gives a glimpse of what "Guys and Dolls" can, and should, be. The usually imposing Big Jule, though, is here reduced to a one-joke sight gag as portrayed by the diminutive Joey Minnich.

Jason Maddy and Ensemble

Copyright©2008 Jared Bauman

Probably the most successful character to emerge from this "stick-it-through-the-grinder-of-realism" approach is Sarah's grandfather Arvide Abernathy, and Ole Kittleson's delivery of "More I Cannot Wish You" is touching.

Elsewhere, though, the production's disparate elements are equally frustrating and puzzling. Debbie Roberts' costumes are muted and dreary, and Jennifer Edwards' murky, moody lighting is an excellent example of why famed director George Abbott insisted "you can't play comedy in the dark." The set (courtesy of Fullerton Civic Light Opera), on the other hand, is mostly a traditionally bright collection of painted drops reflective of the stage technology of the era in which "Guys and Dolls" was first produced (one of which, through a show poster advertising a certain Arthur Miller play, has the unfortunate result of establishing the show's setting firmly in the 1955-56 season -- a bit late for Runyon's Times Square, if you ask me).

San Diego Musical Theatre proved last year to be a welcome addition to the local musical theatre scene, and though "Guys and Dolls" isn't the stronger of their two offerings thus far, it's still a far cry beyond what many theatre companies can come up with in their first year. The company has already established itself as one willing to take risks -- for better or worse -- so it's with great anticipation that San Diego awaits the remaining shows in its first season, "Bye, Bye, Birdie" and "Dreamgirls."

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