The Tony Award-winning Frank Loesser musical Guys and Dolls comes to the Asolo Repertory Theatre November 18, kicking off the fifth and final season of the American Character Project with the timeless tale of showgirls, gamblers and straight-laced soul-savers—all long-shots in love and in over their heads. But staging a classic poses its own difficulties, namely how to give the audience something new from such a familiar story. According to director/choreographer Josh Rhodes and actor Cole Burden, it’s all in the approach.

Though both veterans of the stage—Rhodes coming from Broadway productions such as Bright Star, It Shoulda Been You and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella and Burden national tours of Bridges of Madison County and Les Miserables—neither had previously been involved in a production of Guys and Dolls, and Burden had never seen it. While some may view unfamiliarity with the material as an obstacle, Rhodes and Burden saw opportunity in the absence of preconceived notions—that their production began from a clean slate, not unduly influenced by previous portrayals. Meeting in New York City, the pair “devoured” the stories of Damon Runyon, which were the basis of Guys and Dolls, instead.

“That’s been an interesting way to approach it from its origins,” says Rhodes. To him, Runyon is one of the “American originals,” not just for the wit of his words but the authentic, though exaggerated, core of his characters and creation. “He knew and loved these lowdown characters and lifted them through these beautiful stories,” says Rhodes. “He captured in a bottle a part of New York and a part of America in fable form.” It spawned its own language, characterized by ratatat rhythm, garbled grammar and faux-eloquence, and the actors rehearse Shakespeare in Runyon-ese to warm up.

In capturing the character of Sky Masterson—gambler, bachelor and all-around lady-killer—Burden’s unfamiliarity may have even landed him the role thanks to his novel approach. “A lot of men came in, put one eyebrow up and said their lines like they were a stud,” recalls Rhodes. “Cole [Burden] looked at it like a fresh script.” Where other routines fell flat in about two minutes, Burden found humor and wit to sustain the performance.

“In some miraculous way I’d steered clear of [Guys and Dolls],” says Burden, “so it really was new.” The key, he says, is not to fall into the trap of watching the performers who came before—Marlon Brando, Robert Alda, Peter Gallagher—but to find the part of the character relevant to his life, that paralleled his experience, and bring that forward. “Everybody got a baby,” he says laughing, and friends and colleagues are getting married around him. Questions of comfortable routines and compromising for the future arise. “That’s what Sky’s going through,” Burden continues. “That’s so human and that hasn’t changed for anyone.”

“That’s what musicals did in such a beautiful way,” says Rhodes. “Taking the folly of relationships and putting them onstage in a big way so people can chuckle and look at the person next to them and say, ‘We’re not that messed up.’”

Guys and Dolls opens November 18 at Asolo Repertory Theatre and runs through January 1.