The Theatre Group at Santa Barbara City College will launch its 2023-24 season July 12-29 with a new production of the venerable Broadway classic “Guys and Dolls.”

The show is based on stories and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Sporting their period costumes, Raymond Wallenthin, left, Felicia Hall, Nick Ehlen and Anikka Abbott star in SBCC's production of 'Guys and Dolls.'
Sporting their period costumes, Raymond Wallenthin, left, Felicia Hall, Nick Ehlen and Anikka Abbott star in SBCC’s production of ‘Guys and Dolls.’ Credit: Ben Crop

“‘Guys and Dolls,'” says City College, “is a musical romantic comedy involving the unlikeliest of Manhattan pairings: a high-rolling gambler and a strait-laced puritanical missionary, a showgirl dreaming of settling down, and a crap game manager, who will settle for anywhere to roll dice.

“Set all over and under the streets of New York city, the story captures the desperate attempts of gambler Nathan Detroit to secure a location for his high stakes crap game while staying one step ahead of the NYPD. His best chance involves winning the biggest bet of all with legendary gambler Sky Masterson who will provide the stake necessary unless he is able to persuade the very proper Sarah Brown, head of the Save-A-Soul Mission, to have dinner with him in Havana, Cuba. Of course, the real winner will be love itself,” SBCC says.

Stage direction of “Guys and Dolls” will be in the ultra-capable hands of Katie Laris, with musical direction by David Potter; sets and lighting by Patricia L. Frank; costumes by Pamela Shaw; and choreography by Christina McCarthy and Gianna Burright.

The show stars Anikka Abbott (Sarah Brown), Nick Ehlen (Sky Masterson), Felicia Hall (Adelaide), and Raymond Wallenthin (Nathan Detroit); also featuring Britni Alleman-DeLorenzi, Bill Egan, Amanda M. Elliott, Austin Escamilla, Ian Ferguson, Tyler Gilbert, Emma Glaser, Brian Harwell, Heather Heyerdahl, Fred Hunter, Andrew Miller, Abbie Mintz, Will Muse, Jay Real, Aidan Rotunno, Hannah Robinson, Jenna Scanlon, Nicholis Sheley, CJ Smith, Wyatt Spencer, Carissa Stewart, and Angie Zevallos..

Longtemps, Damon Runyon (1880-1946) set the tone for the stage and film treatment of America’s urban underworld of gamblers, showgirls, bootleggers, hookers, and gangsters: colorful, smart, devious, comical, and basically harmless.

Despite the plethora of black-and-white B-movies in the 1950s showing specific gangsters for the brutal, murderous thugs they really were, Runyon’s wry, amused tolerance held until Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese came along and swept these lovable stereotypes into oblivion.

Runyon developed a unique vernacular, tangentially related to English, for his characters to speak: a mixture of the formal with the argot, liberally sprinkled with malapropisms.

Whole franchises were spawned by Runyonese, as it was called. In a Bowery Boys movie, the leader of the pack, known as Slats (Leo Gorcey), tells the police investigating a murder that the victim was “the most extinguished man I ever met.”

Frank Loesser was one of America’s great songwriters — maybe not quite the equal, in sheer productivity, of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter or Harold Arlen, but he was the author of “Once in Love with Amy,” “Baby, It’s Cold Ouside,” “Heart and Soul,” “Let’s Get Lost,” and, from “Guys and Dolls,” “Luck Be a Lady.”

One night in 1938, Loesser and his wife, Lynn Garland, were at the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Hoagy Carmichael for dinner. While the ladies were in the kitchen, making spaghetti, Frank and Hoagy sat down at the piano and started noodling out some tunes.

The door to the kitchen banged open, and one of the ladies called out, “Write somethin’, ya bums!” So, they settled down and wrote “Two Sleepy People,” which was later sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the movie “Thanks for the Memory.”

“I don’t write slowly,” said Loesser.” It’s just that I throw out fast.”

“Guys and Dolls” will be performed July 12-29, in the Garvin Theatre on SBCC’s West Campus, 900 block of Cliff Drive.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 2 p.m. Sundays. Previews are at 7:30 p.m. July 12-13. (The performance at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 16 will be live-captioned for the hearing impaired.)

Ticket prices are: Previews $18 general/$15 seniors and SBCC staff/$10 students; Thursday evenings and Sunday matinees $24 general/$19 seniors and SBCC staff/$14 students; Friday and Saturday evenings $26 general/$21 seniors and SBCCC staff/$17 students.

Tickets can be purchased by calling the box office, 805-965-5935 or online at www.theatregroupsbcc.com.