Music / Guys & Dolls, Handa Opera. On Sydney Harbour, until April 20. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Even as I was taxiing home from this production of Guys & Dolls, Opera Australia’s publicity machine was in action and flashed up on my iPhone to report breathlessly on a “star-studded opening night crowd”, “thunderous applause”, “a magical twist”, “a host of Broadway bangers” and, in short, “a smash hit”. Who needs reviews? I wondered.

The reality was somewhat different.

This famous musical is now 75 years old, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and memorable songs that would have any audience tapping their toes, but it is rarely seen on a football stadium-sized arena, and it could hardly match the power and the passion of grand opera on which Handa Opera was based.

The brainchild of now-departed Opera Australia artistic director Jo Davies, who was to have staged the show herself, it marked a break from the cultural traditions of the 14-year-old event and may well mark its demise.

To be sure director Shaun Rennie, who had stepped in, made a good fist of using the large space and aided by choreographer Kelley Abbey and designers Brian Thomson and Jennifer Irwin, pulled off a visually splendid production.

As well, the shaved-down Opera Australia Orchestra – band, actually – were re-located to the highest position on the set, where, semi-visible, they played the new orchestrations by Jack Earle under the baton of the lively musical director, Guy Simpson.

But with verbose exposition, it took quite a while for things to get going and it felt long.

Two things stood out, the dance and the set.

Abbey, known for her complex, demanding steps, had attracted the very best hoofers in the country for the show, so that the dance sequences were indeed deserving of hyperbole, reaching their apogee in Luck Be a Lady, Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat and the exotic Latin scene in Havana, Cuba. That was the moment for Opera on the Harbour’s obligatory fireworks.

Guys & Dolls is neither a passionate opera nor a realistic comedy, as its characters are cartoon cut-outs based on the Prohibition-era characters of journo Damon Runyon. Also, the jokes about gambling for “dames” can fall flat now, meaning that it needs to be located in a specific historical period to work.

That’s where Thomson came in, with an oversized New York yellow taxi serving as the central prop, also becoming a foldable stage. Gigantic movable dice and other set pieces pushed around by cast members or swung in on a huge crane, along with Irwin’s vivid comic costumes, established the period flavour.

The larger-than-life characters include colourful identities such as Harry the Horse, Big Julie and Nicely Nicely, but the plot focuses firmly on super-slick gambler Sky Masterson, Salvation Army officer Sarah Brown, crap-master Nathan Detroit and his showgirl fiancée, Miss Adelaide, who is in perennial danger of catching a cold.

Angelina Thomson, expertly combining comedy and dance skills, stole the show as Miss Adelaide, notably in the song Adelaide’s Lament and in the show-stopper, Take Back Your Mink, where Irwin’s multi-layered costume came into the spotlight.

Annie Aitken as Sarah Brown proved an unusually passionate, even fearsome match for Sky in the Cuba scene and her penetrating voice, last heard in Candide, carried several of her memorable numbers, particularly If I Were a Bell.

But the male characters, so sketchy in the first place, simply didn’t come across on the large stage, so it was hard to distinguish one from another.

Guys & Dolls is justly loved as a musical with some of the greatest tunes ever heard on Broadway, and Rennie has achieved a bright and bouncy production, but it is one that is ever so slightly too long.