Guys and Dolls

The curtain rises on Broadway with restless movement and feverish atmosphere. Three gamblers, Nicely-Nicely, Benny and Rusty Charlie are pouring over the day’s racing form in an effort to pick the day’s winners. Near by is the Save-a-Soul Mission of the Salvation Army. Here Sky Masterson, a successful gambler, meets the Salvation Army Sergeant, Sarah Brown. He finds her fair game for his romantic sport. Sarah tells him in no uncertain terms that he is not her kind of man, and that when such a man comes along she will know.

At the Hot Spot night-club chorus girls are going through one of their routines. One girl, Adelaide, laments that she is addicted to psychosomatic colds; the cause, Nathan Detroit, another chronic gambler and her fiancé for 14 years. Nathan is busy trying to find a place to hold a floating crap game for some high players.

Meanwhile, Sky Masterson is pursuing Sarah. Stimulated by a bet, he decides to invite her to Havana. Her better judgment not with-standing, Sarah goes off with Sky. In Havana she comes face to face with the glaring truth that she has fallen in love with him. Sky also realizes that he too is also deeply in love.

But after they return to Broadway, Sarah discovers that it is not love but a bet that was Sky’s motive in taking her to Havana. She refuses to have anything more to do with him. Her troubles are compounded with the news that the Mission is in danger of closing down because not enough people take advantage of its services. With Sky’s help, the Mission is saved: with his wide circle of friends on Broadway he can see to it that the Mission is crowded. Sarah’s romantic interest in him is thereby revived. Her love affair with Sky achieves a happy resolution in marriage; and so, at long last, does that of Nathan and Adelaide.

Romance, however, is incidental in Guys and Dolls to the colourful picture provided of New York life, to the insight into the strange impulses and unique motivations governing the lives of some of the city’s more picturesque characters.