Confession time: I walked into “Annie,” the opening show in the 2023-24 touring-Broadway series at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, with a bit of an attitude. It’s not that I have anything against orphans or FDR, mind you, but how many productions of “Annie” can a grown man be expected to see?
“Annie,” you see, is one of the most popular titles in American theater; at one point The New York Times estimated there were 700-900 productions of the show mounted annually in the U.S. — that’s more than one a day. It felt like I’d seen a good number of them.
Then Georgie — the canine actor playing stray mutt Sandy — gave me the perfect opening for this column. He yawned — I mean full-on yawned as only a dog can do — right at the climax of Annie’s anthemic “Tomorrow.” It was the perfect visual for how I felt about seeing this show for the umteenth time.
Except it wasn’t. Because I realized with a combination of confusion and surprise that I was, um, enjoying this production.
There’s nothing revolutionary about this latest “Annie.” And that’s all for the good, because who wants a revolutionary “Annie”? But what director Jenn Thompson has done is strip away all the character mugging that has become the hallmark of so many iterations of the show, and found an appealing cast to just be the characters as written.
Not that they don’t add their own personal touches — including Georgie’s yawn, which now I’m sure was a deliberate and well-placed comment on the shameful cynicism that runs rampant in the world today.
The musical’s feel-good plot is well-known: Billionaire Oliver Warbucks and his assistant, Grace, pluck Li’l Orphan Annie from the orphanage where she and the other urchins are treated abysmally by Miss Hannigan. When Warbucks puts up a reward if her long-lost parents come forward, Miss Hannigan’s brother and his moll hatch a plot to pose as the couple and run off with the money. Meanwhile, Warbucks realizes he has come to love the girl as his own.
Oh, along the way she spends a magical evening in New York City, gets the Christmas of her dreams and also crashes a cabinet meeting in Washington, D.C., where she inspires FDR’s New Deal that lifted the country out of the crippling Great Depression.
Ranier (Rainey) Treviño has the grin on her face and the belt in her voice to be the kind of Annie you think of when you think of Annie. Christopher Swan displays the Daddy Warbucks twinkle under the gruff exterior, and Julia Nicole Hunter radiates goodheartedness as Grace.
The villains are gleeful crooks, and Stefanie Londino brings a particularly crafty energy to Miss Hannigan — she’s over everyone and everything, rather than evil for evil’s sake, and her disdainful demeanor is delightful. So is her shimmy in “Easy Street.”
Even the hopeful starlet’s solo in the big “N.Y.C.” tribute to the Big Apple brought a smile to my face. (It’s beautifully delivered with infectious optimism by a glowing Savannah Fisher.)
Watching Annie pave the way for a governmental breakthrough made me wonder if that’s what Congress needs right now: A curly-headed moppet to lead squabbling representatives in song. For a moment, thanks to the magic of theater, it seemed possible. In the cold light of day, not so much, but recovering one’s optimism is a process.
As I left the theater, though, I found myself full of happy memories of New York City. And looking forward to Christmas. And believing, at least for a minute or two, that the good people in the world outnumber the bad. And, yes, putting my faith in the fact the sun will come out tomorrow.
What more can you ask from “Annie”?
‘Annie’
- Length: 2:35, including intermission
- Where: Walt Disney Theater at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave. in Orlando
- When: through Oct. 29
- Cost: $60 and up
- Info: drphillipscenter.org/annie
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