From The High Point Enterprise 3/6

The guys and dolls make musical a theater staple
By Vicki Knopfler

High Point – There’s a reason the 57-year-old musical “Guys and Dolls” is such a regular in theater groups’ rotations. The easy explanation is that it’s fun, said Bobby Bodford, who directs the High Point Community Theatre production that opens tonight. Look a little more closely, and “Guys and Dolls” is a stellar example of one of the best structured musical comedies of all time, he said.

It mixes elements about which most of us know little – colorful, lovable 1940s’ New York gangsters and the women who love them – with the uni­versal favorites of love stories and fun Broadway songs by Frank Loesser.

“Guys and Dolls” is based on a Da­mon Runyon story. To raise money for his floating craps game, Nathan Detroit bets big-time gambler Sky Masterson that he can’t take the first girl he sees on a trip to Havana, Cuba, which at the time was a playground for gambling and decadence.

As luck – and a twisting story line – would have it, Masterson focuses his efforts on Sarah Brown, a dedicated sergeant with the Save-a-Soul Mission.
Detroit, meanwhile, has been engaged for 14 years to Miss Adelaide, a per­former at the Hot Box nightclub.

“It’s really a colorful group of charac­ters. They’re basically likeable gang­sters, not bad guys, but they do bad things,” Bodford said. “Then you’ve got the complete opposite with the Save-a­Soul Mission. And of course, anything that’s going to be successful has to have a love story, and this has two.”

Bodford, who is from Winston-Salem and lives in Pilot Mountain, has more than 35 years of experience as a direc­tor. He has a degree in theater arts from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and he’s worked in the­ater in New York and Los Angeles and on television series.
This is his debut with High Point Community Theatre and his first time directing “Guys and Dolls.”

“I’m a firm believer in making people laugh,” he said. “So when I do a musi­cal comedy, I take that comedy serious­ly. Since this show is character driven, it’s not one-liners. The humor comes from the characters and the situations they find themselves in.”

The Community Theatre production features a full orchestra, period cos­tuming with men wearing fedoras and a stylized, bigger-than-life look. Bodford expects the audience to have fun, and for the younger members to learn something. “If you’re young, that’s good,” he said. “You need to see what Broadway was like in the ’50s, to get to experience a musical of the ’50s and compare it to the way musicals are today.”