HANDA OPERA ON SYDNEY HARBOUR: GUYS & DOLLS

By Diana Simmonds

March 22 2025

GUYS & DOLLS, Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, Opera Australia at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. 21 March-20 April 2025. Photography Carlita Sari

The 2025 Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour has much to live up to – following fourteen years of annual excess and success dreamed up by former artistic director Lyndon Terracini. With the 75-year-old Broadway classic Guys & Dolls it has again scored an artistic triumph and a memorable spectacular.

In the years since HOSH first floated its boat there’s not been a dud. It’s a remarkable record. Beginning with Francesca Zambello’s unforgettable La Traviata with Emma Matthews suspended beneath designer Brian Thomson’s first stroke of genius: a vast crystal chandelier (hanging from a crane), the productions have been ridiculously amazing while remaining true to musical and dramatic demands.

They were Gale Edwards’ riveting Carmen (2013 and 2017) with Kelley Abbey’s outstanding choreography, Brian Thomson’s monumental scarlet “Carmen” – visible around the harbour – and Julie Lynch’s luscious costumes. In 2014 we wept at Hiromi Amura’s heartwrenching Cio-Cio San in La Fura dels Baus director Alex Ollé’s Madama Butterfly. It returned in 2023 with Karah Son in the title role, delivering to Sydney two great Asian sopranos.

In 2015, while Latonia Moore sacrificed herself as Aida, a semi-ruined sculptural head of Nefertiti towered above the stage (designer Mark Thompson, director Gale Edwards). It provided a windy and dizzy platform for Amneris (the late and deeply-lamented Jacqui Dark, and Milijana Nikolic).

In 2016, we had designer Dan Potra’s 60m fire-breathing dragon and a lofty pagoda. Director Chen Shi-Zheng brought Turandot back from western exoticism to our neighbourhood, and Riccardo Massi and Arnold Rawls electrified audiences with Nessun Dorma. In 2018 the setting was cobbled streets and snowy Paris – Dan Potra again, with Gale Edwards’ former assistant director Andy Morton in charge. All were conducted by maestro of the sub-aquatic orchestra pit, Brian Castles-Onion.

In 2019 (and 2024) the first musical, Bernstein/Sondheim/Laurents West Side Story lit up Farm Cove with a New York overpass, subway cars, and the Jets and Sharks (Brian Thomson, costumes: Jennifer Irwin), with Jerome Robbins’ original choreography, directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted for the first time by Guy Simpson. In 2022, it was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera thrilling audiences with spectacle – a gondola gliding beneath the grandeur of the Paris Opera Garnier   as a baroque organ pounded away above (Gabriela Tylesova designed and Simon Phillips directed).

And now, keeping its end up after such extraordinary creative and artistic endeavour, it’s the exuberant, crap-shooting, gamble-on-a-raindrop world of 1950s New York and Guys & Dolls. Based on Damon Runyon short stories, the heaven-or-hell tussle between tambourine-thumping missionaries and lippy wise guys – plus the gorgeous dolls of the, ahem, Hot Box niterie – is played out around an oversized big yellow taxi, chunks of downtown non-architecture and many large dice. (Brian Thomson – master of intimacy on a vast scale, and Jennifer Irwin – mistress of vivid 40s-50s-wear.)

In brief: Nathan Detroit (Bobby Fox) is an incurable gambler, Miss Adelaide (Angelina Thompson) is star chorine at the Hot Box and his fianceé of fourteen years. In need of $1k to host a game Nathan devises a sting on ace gambler Sky Masterson (Cody Simpson) betting him he won’t persuade a doll to have dinner with him in Havana. Too easy, says Sky, until Nathan reveals the doll: upstanding Sergeant Sarah Brown (Annie Aitken) of the local Mission.

Heartthrob Sky/Cody (audience squeals greet his first entrance) is not put off and as a crane swings a signifying neon sign into place, we’re in Cuba where Sarah discovers the aphrodisiac properties of Bacardi. Back in New York, Adelaide has kept her mother at bay all these years with tales of happy marriage and five children, but it’s crunch time, she tells Nathan: they will elope or else. “Take Back Your Mink” she sings with the Hot Box chorus.

On their return, a hungover Sarah discovers Havana was a bet and gives Sky the boot. He promises her a congregation of sinners if she’ll give him another chance. Sky’s persuasive powers even stretch to dice – “Luck Be A Lady Tonight” as he works on the reluctant hustlers to attend a Mission meeting. Along the way Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Jason Arrow) stops the show with “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”, and grumpy cop Lt Brannigan (Thomas Campbell) tickles the collective funny bone with a politically incorrect speech impediment. The end is a happy one, natch.

Book, music and lyrics by Abe Burrows, Jo Swerling and Frank Loesser, with new orchestrations by Jack Earle and Guy Simpson, are classic period Broadway and stand the test of time. There’s not a weak link in the production and for director Shaun Rennie, taking over in trying circumstances, it’s a remarkable achievement. I loved it and Kelley Abbey is my heroine: what she achieved with her marvellous singer-dancers in three weeks is miraculous and thrilling. HOSH – Guys & Dolls is one of the most spectacular nights anywhere in the world.