Annie was one of my favorite movies growing up, along with Matilda, and the Sound of Music. Ah, why isn’t the latter on Broadway? Matilda, I’ve read somewhere, was playing in London last year, and might soon be on Broadway! Perhaps the Sound of Music will follow someday. Annie the Musical has currently made the Palace Theater on Broadway, home. It is a good musical, very family oriented, and a real cute dog on stage as Sandy.
Book by Thomas Meehan, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler, and directed by James Lapine. All Tony Award winners! Also starring Lilla Crawford as Annie, Katie Finneran as Miss Hannigan, Anthony Warlow as Oliver Warbucks. There’s of course more. I am not listing them, please go to Annie’s Broadway page to get to know them all. By far, Katie Finneran as Miss Hannigan gave the best performance. She’s really funny.
After I saw the musical last Thursday evening, I kept going back and forth on whether or not to write a review. Honestly, most of us agree that children are charming, and so are dogs. Together it must be double charming right? Well those two points are what is making me careful about reviewing the musical. I think it could have been better. The story line was pretty good. All the cute factors were there, but I feel like the production relied a bit much on the ‘cute factors’ to sell the show rather than an actual good performance. I feel lame for writing this because Ms. Crawford is after all a lovely girl of eleven, and it seems that she sung her heart out. I suppose one must think of such things in such lights. Yet, I have seen children on stage perform better. Recently, I was awed by Zachary Unger as young Charlie Chaplin, in Chaplin the Musical. Read my review of it here
It’s a good enough musical, but it didn’t meet my expectations. Perhaps it will meet yours. The person I went with seemed to have loved it, and the audience laughed and clapped plenty. A pretty good indication that a whole lot of them were entertained. I, unfortunately, wasn’t.
