Scenic rendering for Guys and Dolls by Scenic Designer S. Benjamin Farrar
A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
In Guys and Dolls, everyone thinks they’ re right.
The gamblers have their code. The missionaries have theirs. The lovers have their own version entirely. And every one of them is absolutely convinced they’ re doing the decent thing— even when they’ re lying, betting, dodging the law, or hopping on a plane to Havana.
That idea became the heartbeat of our production: not“ good versus bad,” but different kinds of good crashing into each other at high speed.
So we built a world that could hold all that joyful contradiction.
Scenic designer S. Benjamin Farrar describes it as“ a kinetic collision of pinball machine and comic book”— a heightened New York where real history is refracted through bold color and constant motion. Drawing inspiration from the dreamlike“ Broadway Melody Ballet” sequence in Singin’ in the Rain and the saturated comic-book world of Dick Tracy, he’ s created what he calls“ a playground built for outsized characters,” where style and movement are as expressive as dialogue.
The people who inhabit that world dress accordingly. Costume designer Jess Helberg builds from periodaccurate 1950s silhouettes, then transforms them through“ a vivid, playful fantasia” of color, texture,
32 GUYS AND DOLLS | theatrecr. org