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Alex Bourne as Daddy Warbucks appears with Annie on Bert Healy's radio show to offer a reward in an attempt to find Annie's parents. The show bizarrely included a ventriloquist on radio but don't laugh - we had Peter Brough and Educating Archie!!!! Pictures: Paul Coltas Annie
Birmingham Hippodrome
**** LITTLE Orphan
Annie has come a long way since she made her debut in Harold Gray’s
comic strip in the
New York Daily News
some 91 years ago. She has inspired a
radio show, five films and a smash hit Broadway musical which has made a
welcome return to the Hippodrome in a new production, bringing enough
feel good factor to bring a smile to most curmudgeonly of faces. The story is simple, it is 1933 and little orphan
Annie, aged 11, lives in the New York Municipal Girls Orphanage, where
she was left as a babe, and which is run by the drunken tyrant Miss
Hannigan, who also uses the youngsters as slave labour. The world’s richest man, Oliver ‘Daddy’ Warbucks,
takes in an orphan for Christmas, and, after much angst and a search for
lost parents, everyone lives happily ever after – apart from Miss
Hannigan and her scheming no-good brother and his moll that is. But it is all done with a smile on its face with
bags of enthusiasm and no shortage of talent from the ensemble who
double as everyone from Warbucks’ staff and down and outs living on the
streets in Hooverville. Sophia Pettit is just superb as Annie, with comic
timing which belies her tender years and a voice which is about three
foot bigger than she is – she can really belt out a song and she is well
supported by the girls in team Waldorf, one of three Annie and team
combinations used in the show. And in charge of the orphanage is the rather
terrifying Trunchbullian Miss Hannigan, played with a deliciously
drunken air of debauched womanhood by Craig Revel Horwood. Revel Horwood is best
known as a judge on Strictly Come
Dancing since its inception in 2004 but
in his day job he is an internationally acclaimed choreographer and
director, and has made his mark in panto for the past few years, the
wicked queen in Snow White being a specialty. This year he is Captain
Hook in Dartford.
So it is hardly a
surprise that he gives a confident, if somewhat (regularly) gin-soaked
performance as the ‘orrible Hannigan, showing a powerful voice, nice
humour and, for Strictly
fans, he makes the dancing look easy. Incidentally, Miss Hannigan will be played on
Saturdays, for obvious reasons, at the Hippodrome by Lesley Joseph. Miss Hannigans small time hoodlum brother Rooster
is played with an air of criminal arrogance by Jonny Fines, while
Djalenga Scott has a suitably bimbo veneer as his moll Lily as the pair
set about trying to claim the $50,000 dollar reward claiming to be
Annie’s long lost parents. Alex Bourne is a believable billionaire Daddy
Warbucks who discovers he has a heart, as well as a fortune, when it is
stolen by Annie and he decides to adopt her, and he is well supported by
his faithful secretary Grace, a lovely performance from Holly Dale
Spencer who enriches her role with a quite beautiful voice. The show even has a presidential element with
Callum McArdle who first appears as Lt Ward on New York’s finest who
captures the runaway Annie and returns her to Miss Hannigan and then
gets a rapid promotion in Act II to President as Franklin D Roosevelt,
complete with wheelchair.
Despite the years of training, hard work, long
rehearsals and talent of the rest of the cast though, the only member to
get an “Awwwe” from the audience was Amber, the labradoodle, who plays
Annie’s stray dog Sandy and never puts a paw wrong – although Amber does
seem to expect to be paid in treats whenever on stage, presumably
something to do with dog equity rates. Colin Richmond’s clever design is made up of a frame of New York street maps and jigsaw pieces which illuminate to change the emphasis of scenes. It leaves the stage free for easy on-off
furniture such as banks of sewing machines, orphanage beds, desks and so
on all helped by some clever lighting from Ben Cracknell as we are taken
through city streets, a homeless camp, cinema, dismal orphanage and Park
Avenue mansion. Nick Winston's choreography is bright and cheerful giving the big numbers the big treatment and director Nikolai Foster has given the show a harder edge than the “saccharine glitzy musical” treatment of previous productions as he puts it. And although you can’t get away from the syrupy content completely, Foster, artistic director of The Curve in Leicester, has emphasised the social comment and content in the original book by Thomas Meehan and music and lyrics by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin. Gray’s cartoon strip was popular for its domestic
political undertones and comment, usually to the right and overtly
Republican - and against FDR and organised labour in the 1930s -
political content which, unlike Peanuts and other strips, was probably a
reason it never crossed the Atlantic. Music is important in any musical and musical
director George Dyer and his seven strong orchestra sound much larger
than their number and carry all the songs and dances along at a lively
pace. It’s a simple tale, with a happy ending and people left with a
smile on their face and you can’t ask for more than that. To 31-10-15. Roger Clarke
14-10-15 The last Little Orphan Annie strip, incidentally, was published in 2010, 42 years after Gray’s death. It was left with a final panel which read: "And this is where we leave our Annie. For Now—" . . .
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