After presenting a revival of West Side Story earlier this year, Opera Australia has announced that a new production of the Tony Award-winning musical Guys & Dolls, with music by Frank Loesser and book by Joe Swerling and Abe Burrows, will be the Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour in 2025.

Premiering on Broadway in 1950, and winning five Tony Awards including Best Musical, the show inspired by the short stories of Damon Runyan is a musical romantic comedy involving the unlikeliest of pairings: a high-rolling gambler and a puritanical missionary; a showgirl dreaming of the straight-and-narrow and a crap game manager who is anything but.

It was adapted to the screen by Joseph Mankiewicz in 1955 in production featuring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons. The score is packed with some of the most memorable songs of the era including Luck Be a Lady, Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat, Adelaide’s Lament and I’ve Never Been in Love Before.

The Fleet Steps stage of Opera Australia’s Handa Opera on the Harbour. Photo © Hamilton Lund

Shaun Rennie will direct the production on a set designed by Brian Thomson, whose previous Handa...