“Guys and Dolls” is like a baseball team with a five-run lead in the ninth. It’s yours to lose. If you put together a talented, versatile cast with this material, you almost certainly will produce a winner.

Guys and Dolls. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. Based on a story and characters by Damon Runyon. Directed by Mark Martino. At The North Shore Music Theatre, Beverly, MA, through November 11.

By Glenn Rifkin

Wayne W. Pretlow (Nicely-Nicely), and Ben Roseberry (Benny Southstreet) in North Shore Music Theatre’s production of GUYS AND DOLLS. Photo: Paul Lyden.

Watching the wonderful Wayne W. Pretlow as Nicely Nicely Johnson belting out the show stopping “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” simply confirms the genius of Frank Loesser and the allure of the timeless Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, one of those extraordinary shows that helped define the entire genre. Some call it the perfect musical, and with good reason. One of the barometers of a great Broadway musical experience is whether or not you leave the theater humming one of the numbers and knowing it is a tune that will remain in your inner repertoire forever. For more than 60 years, Guys and Dolls has offered up not just one but a half dozen such numbers—from the aforementioned “Sit Down” to “Luck Be a Lady,” “I’ll Know,” “Adelaide’s Lament (a poyson could develop a cold!),” the title tune “Guys and Dolls,” “Fugue for Tinhorns (I got the horse right here . . .),” and “A Bushel and a Peck.”

Indeed, Guys and Dolls is like a baseball team with a five-run lead in the ninth. It’s yours to lose. If you put together a talented, versatile cast with this material, you almost certainly will produce a winner. And the production at the North Shore Musical Theatre (NSMT) is loaded with talent, style, and pizzazz, a word borrowed freely from Damon Runyon’s colorful, eclectic imagination. The allure of this production is that the NSMT offers up near Broadway quality in a far more accessible, theater-in-the-round, not-a-bad-seat-in-the-house setting at half the price of a touring show in Boston.

Based on characters from Runyon’s stories of New York gangsters and gamblers from the 1920s and 1930s, Guys and Dolls is a cartoon come to life, replete with outrageous and colorful zoot suits and burlesque costumes, slick ensemble dance numbers, and a comic language and pacing that is tantalizing. Done well, as it is here at NSMT, the show is plain fun; laughs without a burdensome message. In fact, the plot line is a reed-thin foundation for the show: Nathan Detroit, a bumbling but sympathetic gambler, needs to find $1000 in order to run his floating New York city crap game. His 14-year engagement to burlesque singer Adelaide, and an odd romance between the suave Sky Masterson and the comely missionary Sarah, are the ostensible sub-plots. Not much there but the net result is pure genius. Loesser’s music and lyrics are a priceless mix. Where else can you hear a song with the line “You can spray her wherever you figure the streptococci lurk, You can give her a shot for whatever she’s got, but it just won’t work…” Streptococci? Wow. That’s writing that has inspired generations of wannabe Broadway lyricists.

Mylinda Hull (Miss Adelaide) and and the ensemble of North Shore Music Theatre’s production of GUYS AND DOLLS. Photo: Paul Lyden.

The show, which first came to Broadway in 1950 and won two Tony Awards, has been revived more times than one can count and has become a staple of high school and college drama departments. The NSMT production features a cast without any marquee names but with plenty of Broadway credibility. Jonathan Hammond is a perfect puckish Nathan and Mylinda Hull steals the show as the irrepressible Adelaide. Kelly McCormick as Sarah Brown and Kevin Vortmann as Sky Masterson have terrific voices, but the performers lack the energy required of these important roles. A few of their numbers, particularly the Havana nightclub scene, felt strained.

It was Pretlow who roused the relatively muted audience to cheer with his pitch-perfect rendition of “Sit Down” and also a memorable duet with Ben Roseberry as Benny Southstreet on the title song. Pretlow puts his own distinctive stamp on Nicely Nicely and almost makes you forget Stubby Kaye’s original version. Add in the tantalizing costume design and the sizzling choreography and Bostonians have good reason to schlep to Beverly for the show.

Glenn Rifkin is a veteran journalist and author who has covered business for many publications including The New York Times for nearly 30 years. He has written about music, film, theater, food and books for The Arts Fuse. His new book Future Forward: Leadership Lessons from Patrick McGovern, the Visionary Who Circled the Globe and Built a Technology Media Empire was recently published by McGraw-Hill.