Damon Runyon (1880-1946) (caricature: Tad, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons), from Manhattan, Kansas, became a prominent newspaperman in the Borough of Manhattan from the 1920s until his death. While he worked primarily as a sportswriter, he became fascinated by some aspects of New York life that accompanied the sporting scene, and wrote a series of short stories set in a demimonde of gambling, boozing, and long-suffering women. Several of these stories, including “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown”, in which the gambler Sky Masterson wins a high stakes bet by persuading Miss Brown, an Evangelical missionary to the lost souls of Runyonland, to accompany him on a vacation to Havana, became the basis for Guys and Dolls, a 1950 Broadway hit with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.
For the next three weekends the Heights Players, “Brooklyn’s longest-running sustaining theater”, will present Guys and Dolls featuring Joe Bliss as craps king Nathan Detroit, Morgan Detogne as his frustrated girlfriend Miss Adelaide, David Kurnov as high roller Sky Masterson, and Rachel Hering as Miss Brown, the missionary who becomes his successful mission, all directed by Marie Ingresano Isner. Performances will be every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from Friday, May 5 through Sunday, May 21. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 8:00 PM; Sundays at 2:00 PM. The show will be held at the John Bourne Theater, 26 Willow Place (between Joralemon and State streets). You may buy tickets or make reservations here.
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