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Tomorrow Never Dies
Sugar leavened with enough spice makes tasty holiday
fare
BY RONALD MANGRAVITE
The holidays are
upon us, and with them comes the annual choice
of whether to surrender to or resist their cheery
traditions. Clearly intent on your surrender,
the Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables is presenting
Annie, a big traditional musical staged in a big
traditional way. But whereas past holiday shows
at the playhouse have centered on the company's
first-rate production team as the main attraction,
Annie adds a welcome surprise: an impressive array
of first-rate performances. And for now at least,
Actors' Playhouse lives up to its name.
As you probably already know, Annie is based on
characters and storylines from the old-time comic
strip "Little Orphan Annie," and the
musical retains the gee-whiz cartoonish style
of its source. Annie doesn't try to reinvent the
Broadway musical but is pretty much a retro homage
to it. Its creators all have Broadway pedigrees.
Composer Charles Strouse wrote the tunes for Applause
and Bye Bye Birdie. Three-time Tony-winning playwright
Thomas Meehan penned Hairspray, The Producers,
and the upcoming Bombay Dreams, which is scheduled
to hit the Broadway stage in late April. The story,
set at Christmastime during the Great Depression,
follows little Annie's attempts to run away from
her dreary all-girls orphanage to find her long-lost
parents. Instead she encounters billionaire Oliver
Warbucks, who takes a shine to her and wants to
help her quest. But trouble shows up, in the persons
of the child-hating, scheming orphanage director
Miss Hannigan and her lowlife hustler brother
Rooster. They plan to pose Rooster and his gum-snapping
tootsie as Annie's parents to collect a reward
that Warbucks has posted. |
Annie
Details: Book by Thomas Meehan, music by Charles
Strouse and lyrics by Martin Charnin. Directed
by David Arisco. Starring Irene Adjan, Terry
M. Cain, Janet Dacal, Karina Fernandez, Terrell
Hardcastle, John Herrera, Christopher A. Kent,
Margot Moreland, and Colleen Tueth. Through
January 4; Call 305-444-9293.
Where: The Actors' Playhouse, 280 Miracle Mile,
Coral Gables |
Annie's storyline has its charm and so does its
tuneful, rather simple score. But the clear attraction
in this production is its splendid performances, which
are not only well sung but particularly well acted.
John Herrera, a Tony nominee from New York (The Mystery
of Edwin Drood), makes a very fine Warbucks, offering
more emotional range and texture than Albert Finney
did in the movie version. Like the male leads in several
recent Playhouse shows, including The King & I
and The Sound of Music, Warbucks is an isolated powerful
man who comes to terms with his emotional identity
through his interactions with children. In this Herrera
is exceptionally good, articulating Warbucks's progress
from harsh coldness to sensitivity, and his rich,
romantic singing voice turns the act two ballad "Something
Was Missing," usually a time-chewing redundancy
of a number, into a moment of self-discovery. In the
title role, Karina Fernandez is little short of mind-boggling.
Consider this -- the first number in the show is not
only Annie's first solo, "Maybe," but she
has to follow it in the same scene with a second,
the show-stopper "Tomorrow." In her professional
debut, Miss Fernandez, a middle-schooler from South
Miami, calmly and coolly knocks down both numbers
with an assurance and vocal technique that's above
reproach.
But that's not all, folks. To this add Margot Moreland's
hilarious, gleeful villainy as the scheming Miss Hannigan,
a smashing performance that in my opinion defines
the role, outshining even the original Hannigans,
Carol Burnett and Kathy Bates. Moreland's booze-swilling,
seething Hannigan lurches around the stage in a seedy
bathrobe that looks like a recycled bedspread, a deliciously
nasty turn. Yet like Herrera, Moreland's characterization
is grounded in an emotional reality. Hannigan is bad
but her desperation, her frustration and sorrow make
her more than a caricature.
The rave list goes on -- Terrell Hardcastle is a
delight as Hannigan's nasty brother Rooster, a smooth-moving,
slick-talking sharpie whose manner belies a desperate
insecurity. Terry M. Cain, who in seasons past has
perfected the art of mugging to felonious levels,
has reined in his instincts of late and here, as he
did in Floyd Collins and Return to the Forbidden Planet,
delivers excellent support in the important role of
FDR. Same goes for Christopher Kent's smarmy radio
show host, Irene Adjan as Rooster's squeaky-voiced
squeeze, and Janet Dacal, whose turn as a Star To
Be in the first-act number "NYC" is brief
but memorable. Add to this array a talented, plucky,
hard-working chorus of orphan girls and what results
is just the right dose of sugar and spice.
The company gets excellent support from director
David Arisco and his usual production team. Arisco's
staging is conservative and precise, efficient and
fluid. Barbara Flaten's choreography, a mélange
of classic Broadway styles, adds energy and assurance
and some nice splashes of humor. Both make good use
of M.P. Amico's elaborate sets, a series of scrims
and arches in bright comic-book colors offset with
darker cityscapes. Mary Lynne Izzo once again serves
up eye-catching, stylish costumes, and Ginny Adams
lights it all with rich, warm hues and shadings that
turn the stage pictures into holiday ornaments.
Annie made its debut in the late 1970s during a troubled
era in America, which was still hung over from the
effects of Vietnam and Watergate and caught up in
a string of economic woes, a staggering economy, and
rampant inflation. Annie's creators played on a nostalgia
for the New Deal era: In one second-act scene (cut
from the movie version) Annie and Warbucks, a die-hard
Republican, visit his long-time foe FDR and his Cabinet
in Washington. FDR and company despair over all the
bad news from the Depression. Warbucks and FDR, old
antagonists, try to work together to come up with
some solutions. It's only when Annie reprises "Tomorrow"
that the pols cheer up and suddenly dream up the New
Deal's public projects programs. All of this is tongue-in-cheek,
of course, but the show's relentless optimism may
have presaged a trend: Ronald Reagan won the presidency
with his upbeat "Morning In America" theme,
defeating President Jimmy Carter, who was forever
tarred by his comment about American malaise. The
country has changed a great deal since those days,
but Annie continues to offer some resonance. War,
terrorism, economic woes still plague the country,
and the Republican majority has been rather successful
in its quest to overhaul many federal programs. It's
just fantasy, of course, but Annie's cheerful dose
of optimism, civility, and cooperation could be on
many holiday wish lists this season.
Fuente:
New Times
Diciembre
- 2003
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