Stephen Downie

Daily Telegraph

15 September 2008

Guys And Dolls
Capitol Theatre, 13 Campbell St, City; from March 12, from $69.90, 1300723038, ticketmaster.com.au

FOUR-TIME Gold Logie winner Lisa McCune believes she may have figured out the secret of her own success.

``I do uniforms really well,'' McCune laughs at the media launch for hit musical Guys And Dolls, which opens at the Capitol Theatre on March 12 next year.

The ever-popular actress spent six years as Constable Maggie Doyle in Blue Heelers, plays Lieutenant Kate McGregor in Channel 9 naval drama Sea Patrol and is set to play Miss Sarah Brown, a sergeant in the Salvation Army-like Save-a-Soul Mission in the Sydney season of Guys And Dolls. So is she worried that she's been typecast as the nice girl?

``After I did [the musical] Sound Of Music, I felt the need to buck up against [being the nice girl],'' McCune says. ``But I don't feel the need to do that again.

``Sarah might seem nice, but the direction I've had is that she's really a hard nut.

``I don't think she's particularly nice in the first scene. I think a lot of people would think, `Just get over yourself'.''

Guys And Dolls, Frank Loesser's tale of gangsters and gamblers set against the backdrop of 1940s New York, finished a successful run in Melbourne last month.

The all-star cast also includes Ian Stenlake as high-rollin' gambler Sky Masterson, Marina Prior, who vamps it up as stripper Miss Adelaide, Garry McDonald as her long-time lover Nathan Detroit, Kenny's Shane Jacobson as Detroit's burly problem solver Nicely-Nicely Johnson and last but not least, Magda Szubanski as mafia type Big Jule.

Essentially, the plot involves Detroit betting pal Masterson that he can't make the next doll he sees fall in love with him. Detroit thinks the money is as good as his when Masterson meets straitlaced Brown. However, both Masterson and Brown are surprised when they find they've fallen in love.

``He is a gambler. Everything he has is in his pockets,'' says Stenlake. ``Love is certainly the last thing on his mind.''
Masterson's big song is Luck Be A Lady, which many people will know even if they haven't seen the musical.

Even though it is based around a love story, Stenlake describes it as about as close to ``macho'' as any musical would probably get.

For Stenlake, this is another chance to work with McCune. The pair have been cast together in the musical Cabaret and the TV series, Sea Patrol.

Jacobson, meanwhile, who also stars in his own TV series called Kenny's World, likes to think of his character, Nicely-Nicely Johnson, as being the size of ``Fred Flintstone with the heart of Barney Rubble''.

And it's Nicely-Nicely who gets one of the most memorable songs in the show, Sit Down, You're Rockin' The Boat.