Review: Annie, the musical by The Georgetown Palace Theatre
by Michael Meigs
This holiday season’s production of Annie at the Georgetown Palace is an enormous undertaking. Most principal roles are triple-cast, with actors assigned to Mango, Kiwi or Plum casts. Ensemble roles are double cast, with actors assigned to Strawberry or Blueberry casts. Palace management is proud that 106 actors appear on their stage during the course of 28 presentations, many of those shows outside the Friday-Saturday-Sunday schedule usual at 810 S. Austin Avenue in Georgetown.
Running a musical comedy that way is quite a feat of theatrical logistics. Such extensive involvement builds and reinforces the community of artists and arts supporters that enables the Palace to run its vigorous and well attended season.
Anyone writing a review for you has to advise you from the first, however, that the show that unrolled before him that evening might differ from the one that you’ll see there some other evening. Codes for my Saturday night experience on November 21 were Mango and Strawberry, suggesting an interesting dessert.
Over a six-week run three Annies share those red curly wigs and two bald-pated Oliver Warbucks will be setting the Depression-era United States to rights. Two FDRs will in turn occupy that wheelchair and the three villains are embodied by six actors. Your endearing opening chorus of orphan girls could well be different from the one that introduced us to Annie's bleak orphanage.
The quality of a stage production depends not only on the length and intensity of a cast's rehearsal but also on the artists’ exploration of the piece before successive audiences. A good show can become a better show, growing in assurance and savvy throughout its run. The sparkling reputation of the Palace rests in part on the dazzle that flows from those characteristics. Multiple casting means that the presentations of Annie will be less advantaged by these “practice effects.”
The Annie that I saw on Saturday of opening weekend was a good show. Lana Roff as Annie was on cue, on note and on time, if a bit more solemn than the proto-Annie of the comic strip or the prancing Annie played by Aileen Quinn in the 1982 motion picture. Playing Daddy Warbucks is Dana Barnes, a familiar face at the Palace and a big guy with a vivid personality, convincing both as the plutocrat and as the reluctantly tender father figure. Singing was generally pretty good. The charming orphelines with Annie appeared a bit uncoordinated initially in their choreography but the girls were cute and they were throwing their hearts into it on that cold and barren forestage.
The shift of scene to the Warbucks mansion gave the audience one of those satisfying, magical Georgetown Palace scenic transformations – from iron cots, bare boards and bare wall to a two-story mansion interior chock-a-block with color, art and confident servants teeming and dancing their choreographed wonderland. Particularly amusing was James Brawner as Drake the very proper but exuberant butler.
The score appears pre-recorded and is delivered via the Palace sound system. Overtures and post-intermission music without a visible live orchestra seemed odd, particularly when one could see actors posted in position in the semi-darkness, waiting dutifully for the recorded introduction to end.
Annie offers us a curious plot, a heritage of its origins as the comic strip drawn by Harold Gray from 1924 to 1968 and then continued by others. I vividly remember studying the color panels in the Sunday papers as I was just learning to read – particularly the curious styling that gave the main characters huge white empty eyes without pupils. Annie was indeed an orphan, with her faithful dog Sandy (equally blank-eyed) and she hung out with that rich guy Oliver Warbucks, variously thwarting bad guys and living fine adventures. They were aided by The Asp and Punjab, mystic eastern gentlemen who didn't make the cut for the musical.
In order to fit that meandering history into a musical comedy, adapters Thomas Meehan (book), Charles Strouse (music) and Martin Charnin (lyrics) show us Annie as the smartest girl in the litter and therefore the least liked by the vain and bibulous Miss Hannigan, mistress of the city-supported orphanage (played with relish by Linda Myers). Warbucks’ secretary/personal assistant Grace (Amy Frans) arrives to secure the loan of an orphan whom Warbucks can entertain at Christmas, an annual benevolence of his, and Grace, charmed, insists on our redhead.
Annie is dazzled by the wonders of the life of ease, we are amused that Warbucks doesn’t quite know what to do with a little-girl orphan, and we see their growing mutual admiration. Warbucks is ready to adopt Annie but she reveals her desire to find her true parents, so he throws his colossal resources into achieving that goal (including a loan from J. Edgar Hoover of the entire FBI). Warbucks, FDR and his Kitchen Cabinet (Ickes, Perkins and others by name) are enchanted by Annie. The bad guys almost succeed in claiming to be Annie’s parents but they’re revealed. Elliot Ness reportedly solves the case of the missing parents and confirms that they are no longer alive. Singing and dancing and celebration as Warbucks adopts Annie.
Annie is a fantasy – a fantasy of escaping hardscrabble reality and landing in clover, peopled with mostly stereotyped characters and hymned with some familiar anthems (particularly Annie's yearning “Tomorrow”). You can ride with the escapism and enjoy the dedication of the cast and director Mary Ellen Butler, unwrapping for yourself and them a holiday present.
Your evening may not be exactly the same present I unwrapped just before Thanksgiving, but you are likely to enjoy it. I already have tickets for a Wednesday pre-Christmas show, taking along the wife, the in-laws, the kids, and my daughter's eligible young man. What better orientation could ALT give the family to Austin's popular theatre than a trip to the Palace?
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Annie, the musical
by Thomas Meehan, Charles Straus, Martin Charmin
Georgetown Palace Theatre
