Guys & Dolls - 17 March 2007

Yes, me and a friend went to see Guys & Dolls in Malmö past Saturday ... what a lovely evening! I don't think there is anything I like better than seeing a live musical! Naturally I have my favourites and all that, but the atmosphere surrounding it, the excitement when you've found your place and are just waiting for all the slow people to get seated so it can start .... fantastic!!

Principal cast:
Sky Masterson - Tommy Körberg
Sarah Brown - Jenny Silver
Nathan Detroit - Claes Malmberg
Miss Adelaide - Sofie Lindberg

The first thing I'd like to say about Guys & Dolls is that it impressed me a lot, even though it wasn't my favourite "kind" of musical, or musical-music ... (yeah, I realize how confusing that was!) Fact is, there are different types of musicals as well, genres within the genre if you like, and I have to admit that Guys & Dolls was not among my very favourites. Despite that I was quite impressed, and it was wonderful to see a really comedic musical! I find that very rare, most musical has a great sense of drama to them, but there were few heavy, dramatic songs (there were one or two, but they almost disappeared in the comedy).

Claes Malmberg is such a natural comedian, he practically only needs to walk on stage and people starts laughing! He was really at his best here (this was the first time I've seen him live, so it was extra special because of that), and I cannot for the life of me figure out how he managed to pull of the monologues he did, it was outstanding!! VERY funny!

Tommy Körberg is a rock, always a solid wonderful performance. This was the third time I saw Tommy live, I have previously seen him in Sound of Music (1996) and Chess (2003). He did a wonderful job with this part, and showed that he as well is quite capable of performing comedy! :)

I have to say I was a little less impressed by the two female leads though. Jenny Silver as Sarah Brown never really delivered the character, I never quite figured out her character and I got the feeling that she was just showing a stereotypical model of a character, not the character itself. But that might just have been me ... :)

Sofie Lindberg was better, I think, both regarding acting and singing. It was a little hard to get a grip on her as well, as her character, Miss Adelaide, was somewhat ridicioulus, and when you see a show for the first time (and I had NO idea what it was about!) it is hard not to judge a performer without taking into account the character.

Overall though, wonderful performances! Stefan Ljungqvist as Big Julie was SO funny!! :)

And, my first really really real blooper! I'm still laughing out loud just thinking about it.
Tommy had a scene with Claes, and he blew a line. No biggie, those things happen. Claes tried to fix it, and I think he could have, but both he and Tommy had such a hard time keeping themselves from laughing ... when all of a sudden a couple of people in the audience really start laughing out loud! And that was it! Both Claes and Tommy started really laughing on stage, they just had to look at eachother to crack up again! They really tried finding their way back to the script, but it was more or less impossible. Finally Tommy had to walk to the other end of the stage to try and calm himself down, leaving Claes all alone in his corner!
They managed to somehow finish the scene - although hardly following the script!! - and get out of there ... but I'm betting it had been 10 or 15 minutes by then and the entire audience kept on laughing!!
Soooooo funny!!!!!!!!!!

To conclude this little review - it was a wonderful show, with solid performances from the cast - but I have to say that Claes Malmberg was outstanding. The way he moved on the stage and the way he delivered his lines - especially those looooong monologues - were absolutely outstanding!

A couple of pictures of the principal cast:

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