"Guys and Dolls" closely resembles Lena Dunham's "Girls": Both works concern themselves with intrigue, deception, self-deception, misbehavior. Lines of dialogue have "top spin": A character doesn't always mean what she believes she means.
"I'll know when my love comes along," sings Sarah, "I won't take a chance." But of course the opposite is true: Sarah has *not* recognized her love, and she *will* end up taking a chance.
"I thought that each expensive gift you'd arranged was a token of your esteem," sings Adelaide, in concert, "but when I think of what you want in exchange, it all seems a horrible dream!" This is a few yards shy of "ingenuous." The speaker knew well, all along, what her gentleman wanted from her; the gap between speech and thought is indicated by a strip tease. The speaker seems to be saying, "Get out," but, at the same time, she is making herself naked for her viewer.
"When a lazy slob takes a full, steady job," says one wise observer, "you can bet that he's doing it for some doll." In other words, we tell ourselves we are pursuing various avenues of self-improvement for lofty reasons, but, really, we do most things in life for one reason, and one reason only: sex.
A world peopled by fools. Fools who do not know themselves, and so can't begin to know and understand others. Sarah and Adelaide recognize, at last, that this is the world we live in: You have to "marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow." You have to manipulate, offer medicine via a spoonful of sugar. "Slowly introduce him to the finer things: respectable, conservative, and clean. Reader's Digest, Guy Lombardo...." This isn't really a Jane Austen-ish cessation of turmoil: "Guy and Dolls" ends by substituting one bit of turmoil for another. Where we had seen anxious single people, we can now imagine a world of anxious married people. The curtain drops, but we would be fools to think the hand-wringing is over.
Love provides a plot. Love provides reasons for suffering and reasons for celebrating. Love is like the Forest of Arden: It causes shapes to shift. "If I were a bell, I'd go ding dong ding dong ding. If I were a salad, I know I'd be tossing my dressing. If I were a bridge, I'd be burning. From the moment we kissed tonight, I just knew that's how I've got to behave....Boy, if I were a lamp, I'd light. And if I were a banner, I'd wave!"
Loesser writes with obvious delight about his silly men and women, and he gives us a sense of place: a wonderland New York City, with "the cop, and the gentleman with the mop," a crazy town of mission basements, race tracks, night clubs, and cabaret stages. As in "Adam's Rib," there's a sense of life-as-performance: Everyone in "Guys and Dolls" has an obvious appreciation for theater.
It's Loesser's gift--as it is Lena Dunham's--to see hidden patterns in the mayhem. To recognize beauty in the mundane and even in the painful. To breathe life into apparently still settings. To throw us into an enchanted maze, if only for a few hours.
P.S. Behavioral insight is also on full display in Adelaide's famous "Lament." "From lack of community property, and a feeling she's getting too old, a person can develop a cold." In other words: Enduring the attentions of an indecisive man can give you the sniffles. Adelaide has the perfect metaphor for her experience: You take the train (presumably toward Niagara Falls, land of honeymooners?)--but you "get off at Saratoga for the fourteenth time...." Endless suffering! Loesser knew and understood each one of us.
"I'll know when my love comes along," sings Sarah, "I won't take a chance." But of course the opposite is true: Sarah has *not* recognized her love, and she *will* end up taking a chance.
"I thought that each expensive gift you'd arranged was a token of your esteem," sings Adelaide, in concert, "but when I think of what you want in exchange, it all seems a horrible dream!" This is a few yards shy of "ingenuous." The speaker knew well, all along, what her gentleman wanted from her; the gap between speech and thought is indicated by a strip tease. The speaker seems to be saying, "Get out," but, at the same time, she is making herself naked for her viewer.
"When a lazy slob takes a full, steady job," says one wise observer, "you can bet that he's doing it for some doll." In other words, we tell ourselves we are pursuing various avenues of self-improvement for lofty reasons, but, really, we do most things in life for one reason, and one reason only: sex.
A world peopled by fools. Fools who do not know themselves, and so can't begin to know and understand others. Sarah and Adelaide recognize, at last, that this is the world we live in: You have to "marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow." You have to manipulate, offer medicine via a spoonful of sugar. "Slowly introduce him to the finer things: respectable, conservative, and clean. Reader's Digest, Guy Lombardo...." This isn't really a Jane Austen-ish cessation of turmoil: "Guy and Dolls" ends by substituting one bit of turmoil for another. Where we had seen anxious single people, we can now imagine a world of anxious married people. The curtain drops, but we would be fools to think the hand-wringing is over.
Love provides a plot. Love provides reasons for suffering and reasons for celebrating. Love is like the Forest of Arden: It causes shapes to shift. "If I were a bell, I'd go ding dong ding dong ding. If I were a salad, I know I'd be tossing my dressing. If I were a bridge, I'd be burning. From the moment we kissed tonight, I just knew that's how I've got to behave....Boy, if I were a lamp, I'd light. And if I were a banner, I'd wave!"
Loesser writes with obvious delight about his silly men and women, and he gives us a sense of place: a wonderland New York City, with "the cop, and the gentleman with the mop," a crazy town of mission basements, race tracks, night clubs, and cabaret stages. As in "Adam's Rib," there's a sense of life-as-performance: Everyone in "Guys and Dolls" has an obvious appreciation for theater.
It's Loesser's gift--as it is Lena Dunham's--to see hidden patterns in the mayhem. To recognize beauty in the mundane and even in the painful. To breathe life into apparently still settings. To throw us into an enchanted maze, if only for a few hours.
P.S. Behavioral insight is also on full display in Adelaide's famous "Lament." "From lack of community property, and a feeling she's getting too old, a person can develop a cold." In other words: Enduring the attentions of an indecisive man can give you the sniffles. Adelaide has the perfect metaphor for her experience: You take the train (presumably toward Niagara Falls, land of honeymooners?)--but you "get off at Saratoga for the fourteenth time...." Endless suffering! Loesser knew and understood each one of us.
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