A peppy ‘Annie’ at the Shubert is true to its 1930s setting
When Little Orphan Annie is brought to the mansion of Depression-era billionaire Oliver Warbucks and loudly sings, “I think I’m gonna like it here,” you can strongly sense the audience sharing that sentiment about the show in general.
The latest national tour of “Annie,” at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven through Sunday, restores the show to its original scrappy glory and — Leapin ‘Lizards! — respects its pop culture origins.
This is an “Annie” that knows that “Little Orphan Annie” was a comic strip first, and that its young heroine could be hotheaded and childlike but also stoic and sensible and wise beyond her years. She can be awkward and vulnerable but also wild and adventurous.
The show also respects the era when it is set: The days of Busby Berkeley Hollywood musicals and the golden age of live radio variety shows. It understands its references to Hoovervilles, Harpo Max, Jimmy Durante and the Automat. The backdrops are giant historical black-and-white photos of the Brooklyn Bridge and other parts of New York City that figure directly in the show.
The tour’s current Annie, Rainier “Rainey” Treviño, is better than most at carrying all the sides of Annie. Mostly, she’s friendly and polite. In the show, she’s constantly being introduced to important grown-ups, including the gruff billionaire industrialist Oliver Warbucks (Christopher Swan, never so dour that he doesn’t have a twinkle in his eye), his sweet personal assistant Grace (who earns genuine gasps from the audience when she dresses up fashionably for Annie’s adoption party), President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Mark Woodard affecting the cheery attitude of an elderly man, though FDR was only in his early 50s at the time the show is set) and his cabinet (with the stage characters bearing the actual names of FDR’S advisors).
Annie meets them all with graciousness and a firm handshake. Her good manners become a steady theme of this production.
In other areas, the show is appropriately knockabout rowdy. The orphans really kick up a fuss in “It’s the Hard Knock Life” number, smacking the floors with mop handles as if they were in a Brooklyn orphanage version of “Stomp.” The orphans also give as good as they get with their tormentor, the dreaded Miss Hannigan (Stefanie Londino, funnier than most Hannigans because she’s more bitter and moody than outright evil). The parts where policemen raid a “Hooverville” of the homeless have an extra sense of panic and menace.
It’s all part of a rather complex storyline that younger audience members will have to sit still and focus on to understand. “Annie”
is not a Disney-type musical that has to keep interrupting itself for more spectacle and special effects. It’s a measured piece of storytelling about a poor young child whose hopes and dreams keep eluding her but who keeps her spirits up anyway. She meets some nice people. She meets a dog. She meets the leader of the free world. Even with those enticements, she’s always thinkin’ about tomorrowwwwwwwww.
A lot of these cleanly crisp, tightly played scenes of bonding, discovery and suspense are in the best tradition of comic strips and cartoons. Done right, these bits are surefire. The show becomes so much more than the story of a girl and her dog.
Director Jenn Thompson, who played one of the orphans for two years in the original Broadway cast of “Annie” in the late 1970s, knows exactly the right comic timing for this show, a style once again is true to both comic strip gags, old radio sitcoms and Broadway variety shows. Songs like “Easy Street,” “NYC” and “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” are sped to a pace where they stop acting like Broadway show tunes and start behaving like the 1930s pop songs they’re supposed to resemble. Likewise, the brassheavy orchestra (musical direction by Matthew Smedal) is as punchy as a swing jazz band.
Here’s the other comfortable aspect of this “Annie” for Connecticut theatergoers: It feels and acts like a show at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. There’s a reason for that. The Goodspeed happens to be where “Annie” had its world premiere in 1976. It’s also where Thompson directed similarly bright, colorful, upbeat, optimistic productions of such classics as “The Music Man,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” and “Oklahoma” in the past decade, as well as an “Annie”-influenced modern musical version of “Anne of Green Gables” and, most recently, an unexpectedly jolly “Gypsy.” For most of those shows, Thompson was assisted by the same choreographer who provides the bouncy steps for this “Annie” tour, Patricia Wilcox.
This isn’t one of those musicals where a dance starts and it seems like it comes from a completely different world than the acting scenes. The action is fluid, and the characters easily flow from talking to singing to dancing. A couple of supporting cast members in particular — Tony Mowatt, who plays the butler Drake, and Jaelle Laguerre, who serves as cabinet member Frances Perkins — are so perfectly cast for a 1930s-styled show that they elevate it with every snappy line reading.
Yes, some over-the-top bits are lost and missed or slightly bungled. The realistically bustling “NYC” full-cast number can get messy and unfocused, and Jeffrey T. Kelley strangely underplays the strutting, crowing con man Rooster Hannigan. But for most of “Annie,” the clean and even style carries the show. Ensemble members are permitted not just to play bigger than usual but to create deeper characters, even if just for one or two silly lines. For “Annie” purists, this version restores many scenes and lines that were jettisoned by other revivals or tours, which gives the cast more material to work with.
Among the performers who build their parts up subtly just by standing there looking pleasant is a Wheaten terrier mix named Seamus. He plays the dog Sandy. He hits his marks adeptly and wags his tail mightily. His few short scenes are blocked for maximum impact. Good dog.
This is an assured, amiable tour, as tidy as a four-panel comic strip and a zillion times bigger. It practically glows. This of course makes it ideal for heartwarming, uplifting cold-weather winter entertainment. Just more good timing for this well-timed “Annie.”