Message from the Director

Message from the Director

The musical 'Guys and Dolls' was the brainchild of two Broadway producers, Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin. The original source of inspiration was the work of Damon Runyon,one of whose stories - 'The idyll of Miss Sarah Brown' - was to provide the basic plot. For the eighty or so stories which Runyon wrote between 1930 and 1946. His own source of inspiration was Broadway itself and the characters who populated it. Many of these characters were colourful to say the least - petty crook and gamblers. Some of them like Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit, were based on real people.

In Runyon's day gambling was illegal in New York State outside of New York City, so it was there that crap games flourished. This activity was a great indulgence of Runyon's crowd, in fact they bet on anything they could amuse themselves with.

The musical itself was first performed on Broadway on November 24th 1950 and ran for 1,200 performances!!!It is undoubtedly still a favourite today. It contains containes some of the most memorable musical numbers ever written and you will be humming them for weeks to come.

The cast this year are fantastic and they got through two days of gruelling auditions and long weeks of rehearsals to put together the show. As well as the usual suspects there are a number of new faces treading the broads of the BSM stage this year and there are representatives from all year group. My thanks go out to them for their hard work and commitment and also to the production team whom I could not have done without. Every year I have been extremely proud of what the pupils have done and achieved, this year is no exception.

Jilly Witcomb