Croswell Opera House's high school cast gets history lesson with musical 'Guys and Dolls'

ADRIAN — Chris Sancho, director of the Croswell Opera House’s upcoming all-area high school musical “Guys and Dolls,” really doesn’t like to refer to her cast as “students.”

“I call them ‘young professionals,’” she said. “This is a really talented group.”

The 1950 musical comedy about gangsters, gamblers and the women in their lives opens at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21. Additional performances are at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22; 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, and Saturday, Jan. 28; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29.

Tickets range from $12 to $25 for adults and are $12 for students and are available by calling 517-264-7469 or online at croswell.org.

“Guys and Dolls,” with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, was based on two Damon Runyon short stories and material found in other Runyon stories. It won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Musical and in 1955 was adapted into a film starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Jean Simmons and Vivian Blaine.

Sancho described the show as “one of the best, most popular, and character-filled and character-driven” musicals ever written, and said her young cast members have really risen to its challenges.

For one thing, the Runyonesque dialogue is very different from what actors have to learn for other shows. Then there’s the 1950s-vintage way the characters carry themselves. And then, too, there’s the fact that stylistically it’s quite unlike modern musicals.

“The popular style of musical theater is pop belt, and that’s not this,” Sancho said. “But (the actors) adapted like champs.”

Students from eight high schools in Lenawee, Jackson and Washtenaw counties make up the cast.

Lila Brighton (Onsted) plays Sarah Brown, leader of a local mission who wants to save the souls of the gambling crooks who inhabit her neighborhood. Unexpectedly, Sarah falls in love with gambler Sky Masterson, played by Luke Gorsuch of Jackson.

Jon Antalek (Adrian) is Nathan Detroit, a gambler and organizer of an illegal floating craps game, while Abby Knight (Adrian) is his longtime fiancee, nightclub singer Miss Adelaide.

Oden Berthelsen (Tecumseh) and Jamari Williams (Adrian) play gamblers Nicely Nicely and Benny Southstreet. The show’s other gamblers and gangsters are played by Tyler Condon, Alex Pizaña, Gage Sterling and Nicholas Trevino of Adrian and Jonathan Dahn and Julia Jones of Tecumseh. Chance Adkins (Adrian) is the policeman Lt. Brannigan. Marley Jacobson and Aiden Ketola of Adrian play Cartwright and Abernathy, who are from the same mission as Sarah, and Lauren Howard and Rosemary Olsaver of Adrian are the Mission Band.

Also in the cast are Madeline Bough, Amelia Bowman, Madelyn Bowman, Grace Steinke, Isabela Guerrero, Trenton Miller, Sage Pizaña, Astrid Thomas and Ella Trevino, all of Adrian; Lilian Schmid of Blissfield; Evan Schultz of Britton; Trent Umpstead of Saline; Claire Cousineau, Jenna Ferguson, Zara Garrison, Camdenne Kruse, Genevieve Lucas, Macy Schmidt and Abigail Van Camp, all of Tecumseh; Meredith Baughey of Tipton; and Chase Kulik of Willis.

Deb Calabrese is the choreographer, and Adam Miller is the music director.

“I was super happy with the turnout we had for auditions,” Sancho said. The result is a highly diverse cast, and she said it makes her especially happy that some of them are students whose previous experience was in the chorus of a Croswell show and now they get to have starring roles.

Everything that has made “Guys and Dolls” a classic for more than 70 years is in this production. The only real adjustments the creative team made are intended to move things along more quickly, by upping the overall tempo and taking out some of what it usually takes to change scenes.

Sancho also added a few touches that she thinks the audience will find especially fun. For example, the raid scene, where the gamblers are leaving the scene of the craps game one step ahead of the police, “is slightly cartoonesque,” she said. “It’s complete physical comedy mayhem.”

She has her own connection to this show besides as a director. Back in 1992, also at the Croswell, she was Miss Adelaide to Tobin Ost’s Nathan Detroit. “So this holds a special place in my heart, this show,” she said.

“I call it a love letter to New York City in the 1950s … and a love letter to the generation that lived through that time.”

She has enjoyed teaching her young cast how to bring that era to life onstage.

“It’s fun to go through this show on an educational basis,” she said. “... I love the whole concept of really getting to go back in time — the fashions and the fads and the way (people) spoke.”

The latter — the characters’ speech patterns — has been especially interesting for the young actors to work on. Between the fact that Runyon wrote dialogue the way he did, and the way people spoke in general 70 years ago, “that was really fun for the kids to learn,” Sancho said.

To help them do that, she turned to a rather unique source. “I asked them to go and find old Warner Brothers cartoons, like Bugs Bunny, with gangsters in them,” in order to study their dialect.

As soon as rehearsals began, the students knew that they were going to have to work hard.

“I told them right from the start that we were approaching this as a professional show,” she said. “People coming to see it will get the same quality show as any other here at the Croswell. I’ve held the cast to a high standard.”

The results have really pleased her.

“This is one of the finest shows that I’ve ever had the opportunity to direct,” she said.

If you go 

WHAT: “Guys and Dolls,” this year’s all-area high school musical

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22; 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, and Saturday, Jan. 28; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29

WHERE: Croswell Opera House, 129 E. Maumee St., Adrian

TICKETS: $12-$25 for adults, $12 for students

HOW TO ORDER: By calling 517-264-7469 or online at croswell.org

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Preview: Croswell Opera House high school musical 'Guys and Dolls'