Guys, Dolls and Other Hot Tickets

EVERY NIGHT BUT SUNDAY, when the stage inside is dark, the street fronting Broadway's Martin Beck Theater is a honking gridlock of limousines -- a shimmering illusion of Manhattan privilege come to life on pavements only steps away from the domain of panhandlers, pickpockets and prostitutes. There is no more characteristic New York City phenomenon than a Broadway hit in the early days of its run, when popular impact is measured by the number of people who are conscious that they haven't seen it yet. In all Broadway history, no hit has been more distinctively New Yorkish than the show gloriously revived at the Beck, Guys and Dolls, a self-proclaimed "fable" that romanticizes * hoods and hustlers, touts and troublemakers, into cuddlesome comic delights. It turns mean streets, back alleys, even subway tunnels into twinkly urban oases of robust energy and delight.

Fittingly, in a season when the Great White Way once again has an inner glow, this most Broadwayesque of musicals leads the way. It has been a season of powerhouse new plays by August Wilson, Herb Gardner, Neil Simon, Brian Friel and Richard Nelson. It has been a season of movie- and TV-star glitter -- Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin and Amy Madigan in A Streetcar Named Desire; Glenn Close, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss in Ariel Dorfman's politically inflamed Death and the Maiden; fast-rising Larry Fishburne, direct from the angry film Boyz N the Hood to Wilson's wistful Two Trains Running; Judd Hirsch; Alan Alda; Jane Alexander; Raul Julia; Gregory Hines. It has been a season of bountiful musicals -- Crazy for You for Gershwin nostalgia, Jelly's Last Jam for show-business angst and racial relevance, Falsettos for AIDS poignancy and artistic perfection, Man of La Mancha and The Most Happy Fella for old times' sake.

But if this is the year when long-battered Broadway takes heart again, the show that symbolizes and crystallizes its comeback is Frank Loesser's funny valentine to Gotham. In 1950, when the musical form was still in its heyday, Guys and Dolls set the town on its ear. Critic John McClain of the New York Journal-American said the show might be just as good as Oklahoma! or South Pacific, but more important, he added, "This is the medium of our town -- not the tall corn or the waving palms." In 1992 its second coming was even more ballyhooed, from the front page of the New York Times to the cover of New York magazine and even network TV. For the first time in years, the most coveted ticket is not to one of the big British musicals that disgruntled Yanks term "the chandelier show," "the helicopter show," "the barricades show" and "the felines show" (Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Cats). Local sages have credited Guys and Dolls with a role in everything from reviving musical comedy and Broadway as a whole to renewing public faith in the city and its mayor. In these extravagant formulations, Guys and Dolls is more than a hit -- it's a myth.