Excerpts from Terry Teachout's review for GUYS AND DOLLS in the Wall Street Journal:
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.
What we have here, I suspect, is yet another case of a revival whose makers didn't trust their material. Viewed in a dim light, after all, "Guys and Dolls" can look like a faded period piece, a backward glance at a long-lost Broadway that was already more than half gone when the show opened six decades ago, a land of crapshooting sharpies in snap-brimmed hats who prowled the streets in search of action. Hence Mr. McAnuff's cluttered, noisy staging, in which the actors cavort before a giant screen on which an ever-changing stream of glossy images of New York is digitally projected. You can barely see the cast for the scenery, or hear the score through Bruce Coughlin's buffed-up, smoothed-out orchestrations.
