For the record, it's English. I was born in Tilbury, Essex, made temporarily 
American citizen?"
When the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie appeared in the papers, the character of Annie was already established as the little girl with the red dress and curly red hair who lived with her billionaire guardian, Daddy Warbucks. With this in mind, you could say that the equally popular musical Annie is a kind of prequel to the strip showing us how Annie got to be the little girl with the red dress and the curly red hair and moved in with the
This past weekend Arizona Broadway Theatre decked its halls with boughs of holly, decorated the Christmas tree, premiered its December production of the perennial Broadway musical favorite Annie and turned it into a yuletide treasure.
Throughout its oncoming run, the part of Annie will be played by two performers. Depending on what night you attend you’ll see either Morgan Goldberg or Gabby Vatistas in the title role. Opening night was Morgan and it would be fair to say that from the moment the young performer completed the showstopper Tomorrow – garnering the loudest applause of the evening - she had the audience with her at every step. As I overheard one patron state in the lobby during the Intermission, “She nailed it!”
Oddly enough, the one reservation I had regarding the portrayal of Annie had nothing to do with Morgan but with the hair. As already stated, Annie the musical is a prequel to the character readers grew to know in the Comics. Traditionally, when Annie is first seen at the orphanage where she anxiously waits for her long, lost parents to reclaim her, the character is portrayed in drab clothing with straight, red hair. It’s not until the second half when she makes her grand entrance down the steps of the Warbucks mansion that Annie has been given the treatment with her new dress and the curly perm. In this production, Annie sports a curly mop top from the beginning which somehow diminishes her Act Two crowd-pleasing entrance after she’s supposed to have had the Warbucks makeover.
Cynics may frown at the idea of seeing a musical consisting of little orphan girls with a cute lead and an equally cute dog, but that’s their loss. Annie has always been terrific fun with a great score by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin and a very funny script by Thomas Meehan, and for the most part
With his shiny, bald head and beautifully rounded baritone voice, David Simmons makes all the right moves as Daddy Warbucks. The
As Miss Hannigan, Johanna Carlisle appears to be having a ball. I’ve actually seen a production where a previous performer stated in an interview how she tried to get to the heart of the character by taking Miss Hannigan’s angst seriously. That’s not how you play Miss Hannigan. It’s broad comedy meant to be played with grand comedic flourishes, and that’s exactly how
A few missteps took the edge off the opening night performance, including several missed mic cues and the occasional slow set change, but as with most technical points, these issues can be easily rectified. By decking not only the musical but also the theatre itself with such good, seasonal cheer it’s as if
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