ANNIE (REVIVAL)
(From
Huffington Post0
Broadway is
for little girls. Or at the very least, a compelling argument can be made for
that statement. Look, Wicked is still pulling them in.Matilda is brilliant in London and -- unless
there's an unforeseeable sea change -- will be the same in Manhattan come
spring. Cinderella, which features
slightly older girls but nonetheless has enormous appeals for younger ones, is
due in February.
And now just
as prominently at the Palace is that long-time favorite Annie,
revived on the Great White Way for the second time since its initial 1977
production. The first return was 1997, and now, 15 years later, an entire
generation of target-audience theater-goers is with us, which has to be how the
producers suss it out.
For those newbies as well as for
their parents, not much of what the critics have to say is likely to deter them
from what is at best -- and at worst -- a competent mounting of the Charles
Strouse-Martin Charnin-Thomas Meehan enterprise, first directed by Charnin
with, it was widely rumored, an assist from Mike Nichols.
The part of the return that
continues to stand up is the likable, hummable score, which includes
"You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile," "Easy Street"
and most famously "Tomorrow." That outburst highlights the comic
strip heroine's optimism near the action's beginning and is reprised in this
version's most delightful sequence -- a meeting of cabinet members and advisors
in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's oval office.
The lead
question for an Annie outing is how does this Annie fare,
and Lilla Crawford fares well enough as she leaves the orphanage where she was
abandoned eleven year earlier to take up a two-week Christmas residence in a
swanky David Korins-designed Fifth Avenue mansion owned by bald-headed Oliver
Warbucks. He's Anthony Warlow, imported from Opera Australia for his bravura
voice, affable manner and possibly for his surname's first syllable.
Young Crawford, whom some might
gauge a smidge too advanced for the 11-year-old tough-talking do-gooder, belts
"Tomorrow" as if there's no tomorrow, but whether she's truly
thinking about what she's singing raises some doubt. Not enough, though, to do
any damage to her delivery.
On the plus-plus side Crawford has a
no-nonsense, Brooklynese manner that also lends ballast in dealings with her
raucous orphanage pals (Emily Rosenfeld, Georgi James, Taylor Richardson, Madi
Rae DiPietro, Junah Jang, Tyrah Skye Odoms) and at Daddy Warbucks's classy
squat with exec secretary Grace Farrell (Brynn O'Malley) and head butler Drake
(Joel Hatch).
The next
question in any Annie concerns the comic-cruel Miss Hannigan
role. This frame, it's the usually divine Katie Finneran, who owns deserved
Tonys for the most recent revivals of Promises, Promises and Noises Off. No third Tony seems to
be waiting in the wings for the work here -- or perhaps "overwork" is
the better word. Finneran's Miss Hannigan is a mean drunk without the inherent
wink the musical's primary villain needs. Most egregiously, she plays the
wonderful comedy song "Little Girls" in such a state of garbled
inebriation that she loses every laugh.
Others not rising to their usual
high standards don't extend to Susan Hilferty, whose costumes are swell, but do
extend to director James Lapine and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler. Neither
of them seems cut out to deal with a orphanageful of rowdy tykes and their
well-meaning or ill-meaning elders.
Lapine brings little to the scenes
involving Miss Hannigan's cohorts, brother Rooster (Clarke Thorell, who does
nicely anyway) and brother's sidekick Lily (J. Elaine Marcos). Blankenbuehler
rises to some vivacity with his work but looks to have a penchant for getting
the song-and-dance cast into circles that eventually register as repetitive.
An
unfortunate result of a so-so Annie is that the libretto's deficiencies --
masked in more inspired productions -- are exposed. The plot is meager with the
main complication -- Annie's adoption by Daddy Warbucks endangered by a
Hannigan-Rooster-Lily plot -- doesn't have much pizzazz. It unfolds for about
five suspenseless minutes -- and among more of the overabundant lame Meehan
jokes.
Another aspect starting to plague
the until-now fabulously Warbucks-ian property is its being irrevocably a
Depression period piece. When the parents of some of the children in the
audience don't look old enough themselves to have seen the 1977 undertaking,
it's no surprise that a song about Hoovervilles, a joke with a "New
Deal" punchline, a spoof of a 1930s radio variety show, and characters
based on Harold Ickes (Gavin Lodge). Frances Perkins (Jane Blass) and even F.
D. R. (Merwin Foard, and very good) fall on unknowing eyes and ears.
In this production, Sandy, the
homeless dog Annie rescues (and whose name has fresh connotations this week),
is played by Sunny, a devil-may-care pooch giving one of the enterprise's more
satisfying performances.
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