'Annie Live!' (NBC, 2 December 2021) – Part 2

 

[In the second part of my report on NBC’s Annie Live!, I cover the rest of my assessment of the performance, focusing on the physical production, and then report on my survey of the published critical reception.  ROTters who are just picking “Annie Live! (NBC, 2 December 2021)” up should go back to 7 February and read Part 1, which covers the background of the play and the NBC telecast, a summary of the plot of this version, and the first segment of my assessment.

[Readers will see, in that latter segment, that nearly all the reviewers, regardless of their outlet (newspaper, magazine, entertainment periodical, website) focused on the same elements of the show.  The reviews ranged only slightly—no outright pans or raves—and the same elements in the production came up over and over again (Connick’s bald pate, the disappearance of Sandy from the stage, the acrobatic dancing of the child actors, and, to a lesser extent, the faulty camera work).]

I have little to say about the physical production.  Though there was an audience present, the performance was filmed on a television sound stage, not in a theater.  It was a large, circular space, which was fine for the 360-degree view the cameras provided us out in TV Land.  The set-up also made for quick and seamless transitions, which was important for a precisely time-limited TV broadcast.

One amusing consequence of this stage circumstance: When Annie first arrives at Warbucks’s mansion, she asks if people “really live here or is it a train station?”  She could have been commenting on the performance venue as much as the fictional locale.  A little metatheatrical joke, unintentional though it may have been.

The open nature of the stage, of course, called for a fragmentary and suggested set rather than anything realistic, but that’s not out of line for any musical play, which must leave room for dancing—and Annie Live! included lots of large, ensemble dances. 

(One small set-related quibble—and I can’t fathom why this happened at all.  Both deBessonet and Rudzinski should have caught it and had Jason Sherwood fix it immediately.  The U.S. flag that formed the backdrop of the Oval Office scene with Roosevelt and Warbucks, when Annie bucks the prez and his cabinet up with a rendition of “Tomorrow” and FDR coins the signature label for his administration, The New Deal—is a 50-star Stars and Stripes from 1960!  In 1933, there were still only 48 states.)

As far as I was concerned, this all worked fine.

So did Tazewell’s costumes.  Perhaps Miss Hannigan’s glad rags were a little over the top, what with her cat’s-eye glasses (on a lanyard, no less) and her big hair, but that was fitting for Henson’s portrayal. 

My survey of reviews of Annie Live! shows the response to have been mixed.  Some writers seemed to have been distracted by technical issue like camera movements and sound problems, which I didn’t cover, and others with the plot issues like those I mentioned.  Others took the whole show into account and found it entertaining and even delightful. 

Coverage of Annie Live! seems to have extended beyond U.S. borders.  Claudia Smith of the London Daily Mail was almost entirely positive about the broadcast (with “a few minor technical glitches” noted).  Claudia Smith was mostly taken with the work of Celina Smith, it seems.

Reviewer Smith dubbed actress Smith’s performance “mesmerizing,” writing that she “stunned” in the role and gave a “powerful performance” of “Tomorrow.” 

She also found that the orphan ensemble “mesmerized the audience with a synchronized dance number” and pronounced Henson a “commanding presence” who “did not hold back when she belted out her song Little Girls.”

Scherzinger “put on an elegant, sophisticated display” as Grace Farrell and “dazzled when she danced and sang.” 

Back home, Emily Yahr observed in the Washington Post:

Unless you’re a fan of musicals or happened to be seeking some family-friendly programming on Thursday night, you probably tuned in to NBC’s “Annie Live!” for one reason: to see if it would be a train wreck.

Yahr affirmed that “we can report that it was completely fine.  Perfectly pleasant, even,” dubbing Smith “clearly the breakout star and often surpassed the singing ability of the adults around her.” 

Smith, the WaPo entertainment reporter determined, was “surrounded by other very talented child actors . . . who exuded theater kid energy to the highest level.”  She labeled Henson “terrific . . . in her role” and reported that Connick and Scherzinger “did very passable jobs.”

While generally positive about the show, Yahr does get very specific about some of the problems (several of which I also mention): Connick’s “bald cap,” the camera glitches, the dog that just “disappeared,” and Annie’s “wild” plot.

In the New York Times, Noel Murray, a freelance writer whose articles about film, TV, music, and comics appear in the Times and other publications, asserted that, even after 44 years since Annie was on Broadway, “The material still plays.” 

Sticking close to the 1977 Broadway original, reported Murray, Annie Live! didn’t “disappoint in any significant way.”  Indeed, he effused, “If anything . . . it was a treat to watch a lot of talented people gather in one place to sing and dance their way through a bipartisan fable” (Warbucks is a “proud Republican” who’s buddies with FDR, the newly-elected Democratic president).

The Timesman gave “a lot of credit to NBC’s two winning leads,” Smith and Connick.  “The supporting performers kept the evening from slipping too far into stodginess,” felt Murray.  “Henson followed in the footsteps of great scenery-chewing Hannigans like Carol Burnett [1982 film] and Nell Carter [1948-2003; 1997 Broadway revival], playing the character as a chaotic force of malevolence.”

The review-writer noted

occasional gaffes in blocking, with actors or crew members momentarily obstructing shots.  In general, the visual side of the show felt a little repetitive, relying on many of the same tight frames and sparse sets, over and over,

but they seem not to have spoiled his overall reception of the production.

Murray dubbed the musical “feel-good entertainment” and noted that,

aside from the multiracial cast and a pointed, crowd-pleasing, post-pandemic mention of “Broadway getting back on its feet,” NBC’s “Annie” stayed pretty firmly stuck in the past.  It was not, in any overtly apparent way, a comment on the modern world.

(A note about the line the Times writer quoted above: Connick may have been referring to the COVID-era Broadway comeback, but Warbucks was talking about the Great Depression.  In any case, the line got a huge applause from the studio audience.

(Along with Annie’s question about the train station, it’s another instance of Annie Live! conflating the play’s fictional setting with the real world in which it was being performed.  Warbucks’s line was an intentional allusion; Annie’s was a serendipitous accident.)

Murray concluded:

So perhaps it was only proper that this musical about earnest, plain-spoken yearning arrived on TV in 2021—when it would hit the hardest—instead of in 2013 [when The Sound of Music Live! was presented, NBC’s first foray into the world of live broadcasts of Broadway musicals].  This show may be dated by design, but when it’s clicking, it can still clear away the cobwebs and the sorrow.

In USA Today, Patrick Ryan revealed that “it didn't exactly spark excitement this summer when NBC announced it would” present Annie Live! on television.  “If you're bringing back ‘Annie,’” admonished Ryan, “you’d better have a star who can shine like the top of the Chrysler Building.”

(Those last words are part of the line Miss Hannigan uses to threaten the orphans if they don’t scrub their dorm to her satisfaction: “If this floor don't shine like the top of the Chrysler Building . . . .”  It’s the cue for “It’s the Hard-Knock Life.”)

“But our skepticism dissipated minutes into the network’s ‘Annie Live!’ on Thursday night,” added Ryan, “as young triple threat Celina Smith took the stage to sing ‘Maybe,’” the show’s opener.  Smith, USA Today’s writer felt, “brings a world-weary sadness and almost desperate optimism to her otherwise chipper character.”  Ryan predicted, “Factor in her easy confidence, infectious smile and powerful, crystal-clear voice, and it’s only a matter of time until Smith’s name lights up a Broadway marquee.”

Ryan credited the productions success to “Smith’s star-making performance,” but also praised “her consummate castmates.”  Scherzinger “brings palpable warmth and pathos to the often thankless role of” Grace “and delivers one of the night’s few genuine showstoppers in the jazzy ‘We Got Annie.’”

He also praised Burgess and Hilty for their “perfect balance of cheese and sleaze, . . . while the orphans’ thrilling ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ was enough to make us wish Annie never left the orphanage.” 

Ryan complained that Connick’s “stilted acting made Warbucks more awkward than endearing, and felt that Henson “doesn’t merely chew the scenery as the villainous orphanage head—she swallows the whole proscenium in a shrieking, mugging turn that whiffs on all the punchlines.”

This reviewer, too, had complaints about the physical production, noting that the “the bare-bones design” marred the presentation of “N.Y.C.”  “The production’s cameras also frequently dropped into frame and obscured the actors,” reported Ryan, “while mic issues left some inaudible.”

In conclusion, Ryan determined:

But what it lacked in style, “Annie Live!” ultimately made up for in heart, with indelible showtunes and a winning lead performance that left us grinning.  And after all, you’re never fully dressed without a smile.

Kathryn VanArendonk and Jackson McHenry, on Vulture, the website run by New York magazine, declared, “Annie Live! really hit the thematic nail on the head.” 

Vulture’s reviewers deemed, “The NBC version was not perfect; it suffered from rushed pacing early on and strange stilted momentum toward the end.”  They warned everyone that Connick’s “uncanny bald cap . . . would haunt his every scene.” 

Nevertheless, the two writers held that “Celina Smith was fantastic in the lead role, supported by a stellar ensemble of Annie’s orphan friends dancing their hearts out.”  Smith. the pair felt, “brought a clear voice and all the sunny enthusiasm necessary to carry the show.”

They praised the kid dancers for “[f]lipping all over the stage, bouncing on the mattresses and hard knock life-ing it all over the place, but miraculously not running into each other and hard-knocking their brains out.”  They complained, though, about that “breathless pacing,” which deBessonet set “as if . . . to make sure the TV audience didn’t get bored.”  Too much was lost as a result, they found.

The tandem reviewers caviled that “Henson’s Hannigan was all big silly thirst and not enough sadness and threat,” but praised Connick’s Warbucks because he could actually sing, as opposed to his film predecessors, who usually weren’t singers at all.

(VanArendonk and McHenry had several more “Highs” and “Lows,” but one hits a musical number that had me thinking—in a different vein, but  never mind that.  They liked that “the oft-cut ‘We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover’” was left in because, “It’s important for the kids of today to learn about the existence of Herbert Hoover through song.”

(I don’t know about that, but as it was being sung, when Annie’s out of the orphanage the first time and comes upon a Hooverville, a shanty town the homeless built during the Great Depression, for which President Hoover (1874-1964; 31st President of the United States: 1929-33), the Republican incumbent who was defeated in 1932 for a second term by FDR, was widely blamed.  The final verse ends with the lines “You dirty rat, you Bureaucrat, you / Made us what we are today.”

(I wondered if Margaret Hoover, the great-granddaughter of Herbert and the host of PBS’s conservative interview show Firing Line, had ever seen Annie when this song was included.  She was born the same year that the original Annie opened, so it’d have to have been a revival.  It’s not part of the soundtrack of any of the previous screen adaptations. 

(By all accounts, she’s very proud of her family background, and I kept wondering if she’d ever heard this song, which is very derogatory toward her ancestor.)

In Variety, Daniel D’Addario observed that, coming at an opportune moment for the show that Annie Live! is, “made its goofy eagerness to be liked, and its occasional raggedness, into assets.” 

“The show’s staging,” D’Addario felt, “allowed songcraft and showmanship to be the stars; numbers played out against minimalist backdrops.”  In his view, “The scant amount of stage dressing . . . seemed intended to rhyme with the show’s message of scrappy resilience and high-spirited hope.”

He judged that despite “the resources of NBC, it was possible to believe that this was something like the best sort of community theater.”  The Variety reviewer determined that this way, “certain flaws could get written off.”

D’Addario pointed out Connick’s “surrealistic bald cap” and noted his “occasionally being a beat behind on lines” and his “iffy styling.”  He stepped around these kinds of faults, however, because “[i]t feels unsporting . . . to pick on a production that seemed so resolutely determined to entertain—and one whose key flaws may be inherent in the source material, a show one loves, if one does, because of its flaws as much as despite them.”

The review-writer called Scherzinger “polished” and Burgess “lightheartedly wicked” and said that “Henson’s performance as an unusually vituperative Miss Hannigan—[was] alternately both brutally nasty and deliriously pleasure-seeking.”

“Smith’s performance,” affirmed D’Addario, was “the most intriguing of contrasts.  While she was certainly polished, hitting her dance cues with aplomb and in strong voice, Smith was . . . appropriately kid-like.  She brought to ‘Annie Live!’ sweetness and a certain naivete, an innocence to the machinations of adults around her that seems essential to the part.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker and Lauren Huff opened their notice with a reminder: “You're never fully dressed without a smile—and Annie Live brought plenty to our faces.”  They labeled the broadcast “a feel-good, rousing rendition of crowd-pleaser Annie.”

Lenker and Huff averred that “NBC crafted a fantastic production with a stellar cast that made for a touching reminder of why this show is a gateway to musical theater for so many kids,” but also expressed the opinion that “[i]t’s hard to mess up the winning score from Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin.

The two writers went on to list “the many, many highs from this big-hearted confection,” which included “It's the Hard Knock Life” with the orphans “adding in aerial stunts, flips, and a superb stepping sequence”; “Easy Street” with Henson, Hilty, and Burgess “warbling and strutting their way through its jazzy strains”; “getting to watch Connick Jr. tinkle the ivories”; and “Newcomer Celina Smith,” who “carries the show,” “[a]t turns, adorably cheeky and heartbreakingly vulnerable.”

Daniel Feinberg, paraphrasing Stephen Sondheim, lamented in the Hollywood Reporter, “Annie isn’t good or bad, it’s just nice.  It’s a warm cup of a cocoa-flavored beverage that lacks enough natural ingredients to call itself ‘chocolate.’”

Feinberg pointed out that the play is “crazily front-loaded and just keeps doing reprises of its three best songs . . .; that Daddy Warbucks is a character with no arc at all; that Miss Hannigan, indisputably the best character in the show, vanishes for most of the second act; and that it’s presented as a happy musical in which . . . a creepy rich guy excitedly [tells] a small child that her parents are actually dead and not a pair of rubes with the last name ‘Mudge.’”

“These, of course,” continued the HR writer, “are problems with Annie as a musical and not necessarily problems with NBC’s Annie Live!  Then Feinberg affirmed, “They just also happen not to be problems that director Lear deBessonet had any power to mitigate, and problems that definitely don’t get better when you have NBC breaking for commercials every seven or eight minutes.”

Feinberg reported that “if I’d stopped watching Annie Live! [after the first 20 minutes] and called it a night, NBC would have had a minor triumph on its hands.”  In that time, he had enjoyed

Celina Smith’s thoroughly winsome rendition of “Maybe”; a group of orphans krumping and cartwheeling their way through “It’s a Hard Knock Life”; the introduction of Taraji P. Henson’s slithering interpretation of Miss Hannigan as The Grinch Who Tried to Steal an Orphan’s Christmas; one very well-behaved dog; and Smith belting out the anthemic “Tomorrow.”

In the end, though, the HR reviewer asserted, “The audience in the venue was happy to be there and the audience at home was probably happy to have live TV musicals back.  And when everybody is happy to be happy, Annie is right in its element.

On CNN, Brian Lowry asserted that “the show more closely approximated the energy of a theatrical experience, with its main flaw stemming from trying too hard to please.”  He added, for instance, that he found “the audience (one suspects with a degree of coaching) sounded a bit too appreciative and enthusiastic, applauding during numbers and carrying on as if this ‘Annie’ was frankly a better show than it is or was.”

“Quibbles aside,” Lowry continued, “the show boasted considerable talent, with young Celina Smith ably filling the title role after a slightly shaky start.”  The CNN reviewer added, “Taraji P. Henson also gamely dove into the juicy role of Miss Hannigan . . . with Tituss Burgess and Megan Hilty providing an extra boost of theatrical flair.”

Lowry ultimately judged that

“Annie” benefited from its sheer unpretentiousness, offering the can't-miss (or at least miss entirely) combination of cute kids, buoyant dance numbers, a little girl with a big voice, that trademark red dress, and of course a very well-trained dog who shows up just long enough to make everyone swoon.

Valerie Complex of the entertainment industry news website Deadline found that Annie Live! was “somewhere in the middle” of NBC’s foregoing live telecasts of a Broadway musical, “with several positive elements and equally negative ones.”

“The Annie Live! ensemble is simply fantastic,” effused Complex.  “They are the most exciting part of the show and the glue holding the production together.  These talented people don’t miss a beat.”  She singled out “their ode to President Hoover’s downfall,” which she found was “harmonized to perfection.”

The Deadline writer singled out Scherzinger’s performance and the song “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile.”  She objected, however, to the emphasis on Warbucks’s being a Republican—even though she acknowledged that it’s mentioned in most of the other incarnations of the play.

Complex pointed out that the production “isn’t perfect.”  She noted, “The staging of the set is sometimes awkward.  Some shots show audience members sitting behind set pieces with no way to see what’s happening in front of them.”  The reviewer also reported that “the show starts with shots out of focus and shaky and that aren’t rectified until 90 minutes in.”

“While Annie Live! doesn’t always fire on all cylinders,” Complex felt, ”a story of hope and belonging is undoubtedly what the country needs right now.  And for many Annie fans, this version will hit the spot.”

On the Daily Beast news website, senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon was of the opinion that “we have reached peak ‘it’s nice to watch something nice’ television.”  He explained:

We’ve spent these [last two] years giving thanks for the diverting, wholesome antidotes to our cynical, nihilistic existence.  Quality doesn’t matter when the public service is this essential: making us feel happy in spite of [gestures at the world (insert original with Fallon)] all of this.

Then Fallon got specific: “Annie Live! was a good version of the musical Annie.  That isn’t intended as a compliment.”  He even asks, “[H]ow have we gaslit ourselves into thinking Annie is a good musical?”  But the Daily Beast reporter backed off a little:

I can make fun of so many aspects of Thursday night’s Annie Live! broadcast on NBC, but those things are an issue with the material itself and, mostly, not to do with the wholesome enthusiasm with which the production was mounted. 

Fallon went on to list and characterize some of the performances of Annie Live! that he appreciated, but he actually apologized for posting what he labeled “a messy review.”  This was due to the fact that “I’m not even really panning the show.  I genuinely loved all three hours of watching Annie Live! on Thursday night.”

I’m going to skip the Daily Beaster’s specifics—he said largely what most other reviewers wrote about the NBC production (Celina Smith’s singing and acting performance, Harry Connick Jr.’s prosthetic pate, Nicole Scherzinger’s talent, Taraji P. Henson’s performance, the kids, and the song “N.Y.C.”)—so I can report what he was really writing about: “But Annie Live! was bad.  And I hate myself for saying it.  I feel like I’m not allowed to say it.”

“We’re still in this space where we are supposed to appreciate the effort and intention of anything like this,” posited Fallon.  “Everything is darkness, and here are some talented people trying to bring some light.” 

“I’m just more curious about when we’re going to allow ourselves to have standards again. I’ve appreciated nice things for a while now. . . .  And Annie Live! isn’t just a holiday event, but something worth adjudicating as television.”

Here’s Fallon’s final statement.  It’s flabbergasting:

Then again, who is the asshole who is going to write the “That Annie Thing They Did on NBC for Families to Watch Together Was Bad” piece?  I guess, at this point, it’s me.

'Annie Live!' (NBC, 2 December 2021) – Part 1

 

[In December 2021, I watched the live television broadcast of the musical Annie with the intention of writing a report on the performance for Rick On Theater.  I didn’t anticipate that the report would be so long, so, rather than chop it up, I’ve decided to post it in two sections.  Part 1, below, will include the specifics of the production, the history of the musical play up to December’s live broadcast, and my assessment of the cast’s performance work.

[Part 2, to be posted on Thursday, 10 February, will pick up with my discussion of the performance’s physical production and close with my survey of some of the published reviews.]

On 28 January, I posted “Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start (MoMA, 2021-22),” my account of the first in-person art exhibit I’d seen since the pandemic shut-down in March 2020.  In that same time period, I also hadn’t been back inside a theater to see a live play. 

Because theaters have been canceling performances, sometimes at the last moment—even sometimes after theatergoers are in their seats—I haven’t been comfortable buying tickets and committing an evening to a performance that might not even happen.

So, no live theater, no play reports for Rick On Theater.  As a substitute, I’ve watched a few online performances (“The Diary of Anne Frank Online,” 29 May 2020) and couple of television productions of plays (“One Man, Two Guvnors (PBS),” 21 January 2021), which I’ve written up for ROT. 

On Thursday, 2 December 2021, NBC broadcast Annie Live!, a television special for the holiday.  As the title implies, this was a live performance of the hit 1977 Broadway musical (it ran for 15 previews and 2,377 regular performances and had two Broadway revivals, winning the Best Musical Tony and six other Tonys).

I decided, in the absence of live theater I could see comfortably, I’d watch Annie and perhaps report on it for ROT.  As it happens, I never saw any of the Broadway productions, nor any of the screen adaptations; I only knew the musical by reputation—and, of course, the songs “Tomorrow,” which was nearly ubiquitous on the airwaves and lips of dozens of singing children, and “It’s the Hard-Knock Life,” which was featured in the TV commercials.

As I did for my blog report on One Man, Two Guvnors as presented on PBS’s Great Performances, I’m going to write up Annie Live! for ROT just as I would a live show.  I watched the 2 December broadcast, which aired here at 8-11 p.m. on WNBC, channel 4 in New York City.  The performance was rebroadcast (on tape) on Monday, 20 December, just before Christmas.

(Peacock, the video streaming service owned and operated by NBCUniversal, is streaming the musical to subscribers.  The soundtrack to Annie Live! is available on CD as of 21 January.)

The show ran 127 minutes (two hours and seven minutes), but it had commercial breaks, so the program was a full three hours.  It was broadcast from the Gold Coast Studios in Bethpage, New York, on Long Island.  The stage production was directed by Lear deBessonet and the television director was Alex Rudzinski.

Sergio Trujillo choreographed the production.  Recipient of the Tony Award for Ain’t Too Proud (2019-2022) and the Olivier Award for Memphis (Broadway, 2009-12; London, 2014-15), his credits also include the Broadway hits Jersey Boys (2005-17) and The Addams Family (2010-11).

Paul Tazewell designed the costumes for Annie Live! and Jason Sherwood the scenery.  Tazewell is a veteran of two NBC live musicals, The Wiz Live! (2015; Emmy Award) and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (2018; Emmy nomination).  He recently designed costumes for Steven Spielberg’s film remake of West Side Story (2021) and was the designer of Hamilton (Broadway, 2015-present – Tony Award; film, 2020).  Sherwood is a two-time Emmy-winning production designer for Rent: Live (2019) and the 2020 Oscars.

The original Broadway musical, with a book by Thomas Meehan (based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray), music by Charles Strouse, and lyrics by Martin Charnin, had its world première on 10 August 1976 at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, under the direction of Michael P. Price.  The première closed on 3 October.

The show, with lyricist Charnin now directing, began previews at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway (now the Neil Simon) on 8 April 1977, opening there on 21 April, later briefly transferring to two other houses in 1981.  Annie finally moved to the Uris (now the Gershwin Theatre) in December 1981 and ran there until 2 January 1983.

Revivals were mounted on Broadway in 1997 at the Martin Beck Theatre (now the Al Hirschfeld) and from 2012 to 2014 at the Palace Theatre.  The play had its London début in 1978 in the West End and there were West End revivals in 1998 and 2014.  National and international tours went out and foreign productions were mounted in every decade since the Broadway première. 

There was an attempt at a sequel, called Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge in 1988. but it opened and closed in Washington, D.C.  A second sequel, Annie Warbucks, had an Off-Broadway run in 1993-94.  Annie Jr., a shortened adaptation for children performers, is available from Music Theatre International, and Annie KIDS, a 30-minute version meant for elementary-aged performers, is also marketed by MTI.

There’ve been three principal previous screen versions of Annie, some less faithful to the original Broadway script than others.  First was the 1982 theatrical film directed by John Huston for Columbia Pictures, starring Carol Burnett and Albert Finney.  The plot was simplified and several new songs were added that have subsequently become part of the stage version’s score.

A 2014 theatrical film directed by Will Gluck, starring Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx, was produced by Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and rapper Jay-Z.  Producers Jay-Z and Smith envisioned this version as “a modern re-imagining of a beloved musical.”  Though a modest box-office success, the film was badly received and isn’t often shown today.

In 1999, a television film directed by Rob Marshall was shown on the Wonderful World of Disney (on ABC television, owned by Disney), starring Kathy Bates and Victor Garber.  Though it was often called a remake of the 1982 film, it was closer to the stage play; however, there were several changes, including added songs, from both preceding versions.

The musical play, which was conceived in 1972 by lyricist Martin Charnin (1934-2019; Mata Hari, 1967; Two by Two, 1971) and book-writer Thomas Meehan (1929-2017; The Producers, 2001; Hairspray, 2002; Elf: The Musical, 2010).  Meehan read collections of the comic strip by Harold Gray (1894-1968), which ran daily in newspapers across the country from 1924 to 2010, but found little useful except the characters of Annie, Oliver Warbucks, and Sandy.

So Meehan invented his own plot.  He eventually saw the story as that of an American, female version of Charles Dickens’s (1812-70) Oliver Twist from the 1838 novel (with a little David Copperfield [1849-50] added), transposed to the Great Depression (1929-39) in New York City.  (All three of the show’s creators, including composer Charles Strouse [b. 1928; Bye Bye Birdie, 1960; Applause, 1970], were New Yorkers.)

Wrote Hartford Courant reviewer Malcolm L. Johnson after the opening of Annie in Connecticut, “From the start it is clear that this ‘Annie’ is really ‘Oliver!’ in drag, lost in Depression America.”

(ROTters may know that Oliver Twist was the foundation of its own popular musical, Oliver!  That play was written and composed by Lionel Bart [British, 1930-99] and premièred on 10 June 1960 at London’s Wimbledon Theatre for a two-week preliminary run before opening at the New Theatre, now the Noël Coward, on 30 June 1960; it ran for 2,618 performances.  The Broadway transfer opened at the Imperial Theatre on 6 January 1963 and closed on 14 November 1964, after 774 performances.)

Therefore, if Annie is Oliver, then Miss Hannigan is a sort of Fagin-manqué (with a dollop of Mr. Bumble thrown in) and the other orphan girls are Fagin’s thieving street urchins . . . more or less.  I suppose that makes Rooster Hannigan, Miss Hannigan’s conniving brother, and Lily St. Regis, Bill Sykes and Nancy.  Mr. Brownlow, who adopts Oliver at the end of that story, is a sort of bookish and kindly Warbucks.  There are other minor parallels, too.

Meehan’s first libretto was plot-heavy, as can still be seen even in the 2021 rendition, and had to be trimmed during and after the Goodspeed première before Annie made it to Broadway.  (It almost didn’t make it.  Reviewing the out-of-town début, Hartford Courant reviewer Malcolm L. Johnson declared, “It’s a disaster.”)

Annie is so well known that I don’t think a detailed summary of the plot is necessary.  Besides, since Annie Live! is so close to the Broadway plot, it would also be very long and, most likely, confusing.  So here’s a simplified synopsis of the storyline.  (Caveat: it differs from the popular 1982 movie.)

The production began somewhat unconventionally, and I don’t know that this gambit was used in any other staged performance of Annie: cast members came on stage wearing ordinary, casual street attire.  They then quickly took their outer garments off, revealing their costumes underneath.  This sort of Brechtian, metatheatrical bit wasn’t used again in the production—it was a one-off.

Once the play itself starts, it’s Christmastime 1933, the heart of the Great Depression.  Eleven-year-old Annie (Celina Smith) had been left by her parents at the Hudson Street Home For Girls the year she was born and the only things she retained from her family was half a heart-shaped locket and a note saying that her parents would come back for her (“Maybe”). 

The orphanage is run by the tyrannical Miss Hannigan (Taraji P. Henson), who feeds the orphans (Arwen Monzon-Sanders, Audrey Cymone, Cate Elefante, Felice Kakaletris, Sophie Knapp, Tessa Frascogna) on warm mush, dresses them in rags, and forces them to do char work and sweatshop labor (“It’s the Hard-Knock Life”).  When Miss Hannigan’s distracted, Annie hides in Mr. Bundles’s (Jacob Keith Watson) dirty-laundry bin and succeeds in escaping after many failed attempts.

While out on her own, Annie befriends a dog hiding from the Dog Catcher, whom she names Sandy (Macy, a rescue dog from Oklahoma City and a vet of many previous Annies) (“Tomorrow”).  But a cop (Ben Davis as Officer Ward) catches her and returns her to the orphanage.

When billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Harry Connick Jr.) decides to take in an orphan for Christmas, his secretary, Grace Farrell (Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of the Pussycat Dolls), chooses Annie.  She brings Annie and Sandy to the wealthy Warbucks’s estate on upper Fifth Avenue (“I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here”).

Although at first uncomfortable with Annie—he expected a boy, because “Orphans are boys”—Warbucks is soon charmed by her.  He desperately wants to adopt Annie, but Annie still wants to find her real parents, so Warbucks announces on the Bert Healy (Jeff Kready) radio show, The Oxydent Hour of Smiles (Oxydent, the sponsor, is a toothpaste), that he’s offering a $50,000 reward (worth over $1 million in 2022) for anybody “who can prove they’re Annie’s parents” (“You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile”).

Miss Hannigan learns of this from her younger, con-artist brother Rooster (Tituss Burgess), and he and his dimwitted “moll,” Lily St. Regis (Megan Hilty), cook up a scheme to get the reward by posing as Annie’s long-lost parents (“Easy Street”).  Miss Hannigan, who has all of Annie’s possessions left by her parents, gives her brother the other half of the heart locket.

Rooster and Lily present themselves at the Warbucks mansion as “Ralph and Shirley Mudge” with the locket and Annie’s (forged) birth certificate.  By the time they return to pick up Annie, Warbucks has learned who they really are.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Alan Toy) arrives with his Secret Service detail and a Marine and informs Annie that the FBI has ascertained that Annie’s actual parents, David and Margaret Bennett, “passed away a long time ago.”

Miss Hannigan and the orphans arrive at the mansion and Miss Hannigan rats out her brother who tries to attack her.  Warbucks points out that Rooster and Lily are guilty of fraud, and that fraud is a federal crime (though I’m not convinced that’s true).  Since the president’s Secret Service detail has the power to arrest, they can take custody of Rooster and Lily (I’m not sure that’s true, either)—which they do.

Through Annie’s intercession, Miss Hannigan is let off without legal consequences despite her complicity in her brother’s scheme to kidnap—and then “disappear”—Annie because she did play a part in saving Annie’s life.  Warbucks, however, coerces her to become President Roosevelt’s first volunteer for his New Deal agencies that will be putting unemployed Americans back to work to end the Great Depression.

Although Annie’s saddened that her real parents are dead, she is cheered up when Warbucks officially adopts her.  The little orphan girl withdraws briefly to find a surprise in her room, and returns for the finale in the iconic red dress with the white collar.  (The other iconic costume piece, Annie’s red wig, has been dispensed with throughout the show in deference to Smith, an African American, in the title role.  It would have looked ridiculous, as I’m sure deBessonet and Tazewell knew.)

Now-“Daddy” Warbucks and Grace become engaged, and Annie, the orphans, Warbucks’s staff, and Sandy all celebrate the happy ending with “Annie” and a grand reprise of “Tomorrow” for the curtain call (though what becomes of the other orphans isn’t actually specified—so what are they celebrating?).

This plot is a pinball game—in addition to some unlikely actions.  For instance: Would even Mr. Bundles set an 11-year-old girl loose on her own in the streets of New York?  Would no one even lift an eyebrow when a bachelor quinquagenarian takes a preteen orphan girl into his home?  Really?

Of course, we’re not supposed to worry about that—any of it—because Meehan’s story line and the Strouse-Charnin score are throwbacks.  It’s a feel-good musical, much like Oliver! in 1960 (1963 in the States).  Change came that decade; by 1970, Broadway was cheering Stephen Sondheim’s Company, dealing with contemporary relationships: dating, marriage, and divorce.  It was pronounced “misanthropic,” “jaundiced,” and “sophisticated” by Walter Kerr in the New York Times.  It won Tonys for Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Lyrics.

(In 1977, Annie’s rivals for its Best Musical Tony were Side by Side by Sondheim, a revue of the songs of the Company composer-lyricist; I Love My Wife, a satire of the sexual revolution of the 1970s with a book and lyrics by Michael Stewart and music by Cy Coleman; and the Broadway début of 1929’s Happy End, a satirical, anti-capitalist musical based on a story by Elisabeth Hauptmann, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht.  Annie was the odd man out in this group.)

As I’ve admitted, I’d never seen any of the incarnations of Annie, not the Broadway début, not any of the revivals, not the 1982 movie, not the Disney TV version.  (I did read Little Orphan Annie when I lived in D.C.; the Washington Post carries comics, but the New York Times doesn’t.  It’s not the same, though.)

The upshot is, Annie Live! was my first real exposure to the pop phenom that is Annie, not counting the TV ads when it was running in theaters here in N.Y.C. (as the big village is called in the play—anachronistically, I suspect) and some of the score.

Now, I have nothing whatsoever against throwbacks.  I’ve confessed my enduring love for the old musicals, on which I grew up.  (As I explained in “A Broadway Baby” on 22 September 2010, “I can’t be very critical about those classic musicals . . . .  They’re like theatrical comfort food to me—I hardly see any faults.”)

I admit that I was afraid I’d just hate Annie when I watched the NBC broadcast.  I mean, I’m not the target audience for the show, either now or in ’77.  It’s a so-called family show . . . and I don’t have one.  I was 30 when the Broadway production premièred; I was almost 75 when I saw Annie Live! 

I didn’t hate it, though.  I can’t say I loved it—there’s too much wrong with it from my perspective—but I appreciate why many people, especially young ones, do.  Even now, I can’t shake some of the songs—including the overexposed “Tomorrow.” 

(I’m still a sucker for sentiment.  My friend Kirk, a frequent contributor to ROT and a playwright-composer-lyricist himself, used to have a thing about aspirational songs like “The Impossible Dream” and “Climb Every Mountain”—I’m sure “Tomorrow” is on his list—but I don’t.  They still get to me, even now that I’m in my dotage!)

I think I’ve mentioned most of the cavils I have with the play—the über-twisty, Franken-plot; the unlikely things Meehan has his characters do; the too-obvious cribbing from Dickens—so I’ll dispatch that examination quickly.

I’ll add only a couple of character aspects that disturbed me.  The most troubling have to do with Warbucks.  Meehan essentially whitewashes the billionaire’s character.  First, little is made of the fact that he wants to host an orphan not because he’s such an altruist who wants to give back, but because it’ll look good for his PR. 

Second, those factories he’s been away for six weeks inspecting?  They’re munitions plants.  (That’s not from Dickens; it’s from Shaw—Major Barbara’s Andrew Undershaft.)  Warbucks—it’s in the name—is an arms-manufacturer, and with war brewing in Europe, he’s on track to make more billions.  Can you say “war profiteer”?

No wonder he needs an orphan to make him look good.

These matters don’t make a lot of difference in the play since Meehan doesn’t raise them at all, really.  I think they’re brought up in the 1982 movie, but I don’t know about any of the other Annie incarnations.  A viewer of Annie Live! probably wouldn’t even notice, since Warbucks is pretty well sanitized in that script.  But Grace Farrell’s character is missing something, even in this new version, that leaves a big hole in the drama.

Okay, we know that Grace was sent to pick out an orphan for Warbucks’s publicity stunt.  He expected a boy orphan, though he didn’t specify that to Grace—so she goes straight to a home for girls.  Why?  Just a whim, or did she have something up her sleeve?  We never find out; it’s not in the script.

She takes one look at Annie—who makes herself conspicuous, so that’s no surprise—and that’s it.  Grace immediately sets her mind on bringing Annie back to her boss.  She’s practically obsessive and even bullies Miss Hannigan, who doesn’t want Annie to go (another question, but I’ll let that one slide), into letting Annie leave the orphanage for the gig at Mansion Warbucks.

Except that if Annie doesn’t get to Warbucks’s place, there’s no story, what’s Grace’s motivation?  After Annie arrives chez Warbucks, and especially when Warbucks coerces Miss Hannigan into letting him adopt the little orphan, Grace goes absolutely bonkers for Annie.  Again: why? 

We know that Annie can charm the pants off just about anybody—we know that because the script says so, but there are no scenes of Annie enchanting Grace.  It’s as if Puck, the mischievous fairy from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sprinkled his magical juice on Grace and, poof, she falls head over heels for Annie.  Whatever really motivates efficient, controlled Girl Friday Grace to become so besotted remains a mystery.  It’s a secret Meehan never reveals.

Putting aside these text and character glitches, let me look at the performance of NBC’s Annie Live!  As I said earlier, I’m treating Annie Live! as I would an in-person theater production.

The production was announced in May 2021, though casting wasn’t completed until June with the results of a nationwide audition process for the title role, which eventually went to 13-year-old Celina Smith, who toured with the national company of The Lion King as Young Nala and appeared on Tyler Perry’s Young Dylan, a sitcom on Nickelodeon (2020-21).

Rehearsals started in October, but changes occurred that must have disrupted the work.  In November, Jane Krakowski stepped down from her role as Lily St. Regis because of a breakthrough case of COVID-19 and was replaced by Megan Hilty.  Andrea McArdle, Broadway’s original Annie, had been cast as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, but in late November, she was forced to step away from the production because her father was hospitalized.  The role was cut.

I can’t know for certain, but as a former actor, I have to believe that this threw off the company at least somewhat—and it showed in the performances.  While no one made noticeable gaffes, the whole show seemed muted and rote.  No one, with some notable exceptions, seemed fully committed to their roles, as if they just weren’t sure what they were doing.

I’ve attributed this to under-rehearsal, but it’s possible that the cause was the nature of the play—particularly that patched-together plot and/or the incongruities; or it could have been a combination of both the script and the disrupted rehearsals.  In any case, the cast seemed unengaged a lot of the time, with spurts of energy when it came to the musical numbers.

The exceptions were, first, the orphans.  They all really went at this task, gobbling it up and spitting it out.  They were less “cute kids” than distaff Dead End Kids.  One wonders why they just didn’t revolt against Miss Hannigan and bust out.  They sure could’ve, I’d have thought.  (Given some of the lyrics they had to sing in “The Hard Knock Life,” maybe they should’ve!)

When it came to singing, young Smith sure can belt.  At 13, she’s still small—she easily passes for 11, as the play says—but her voice can get pretty mighty! 

Speaking of the kids, I was astonished by the dancing they did in Annie Live!  There was a lot of acrobatics—cartwheels and flips—and they were executed to a T (kudos to choreographer Trujillo).  I was especially impressed with the “Hard Knock Life” bit when the orphans slide scrub buckets around from one girl to another. 

It takes a lot of physical control not to overshoot the target or undershoot it, and none of them ever missed her mark.  Remember, these are actual little kids, not young adults playing children.  (Mary Martin was nearly 41 when she opened as Peter Pan on Broadway.) 

Also fully committed were the villains, especially Tituss Burgess’s Rooster Hannigan and Taraji P. Henson’s Miss Hannigan herself.  They seemed to relish playing the bad guys—which, I must add, is great fun for an actor anyway. 

Megan Hilty seemed to have suffered from joining the cast with less than a month of rehearsal time left, and her Lily St. Regis was still a little tentative—especially since she always appeared next to Burgess and usually Henson as well.  The comparison didn’t show her to advantage, but it wasn’t her fault.

I’ve already noted that Grace Farrell lacks clear motivation for her principal purpose: to save and protect Annie.  Nicole Scherzinger is at a loss, then, to fill in what the script doesn’t provide and it leaves the character without a center.  Scherzinger supplies energy—particularly in the dance numbers—but it’s ambiguous, directionless force.  Director Lear deBessonet doesn’t seem to have helped her find a motivation for her main function in the play.

The emptiest performance, in my estimation, came from Harry Connick Jr.  (He wasn’t helped by the laughable pate he wore as the bald Oliver Warbucks.  It kept making me think of the heads of the extraterrestrial immigrants in the 1989-90 TV series Alien Nation.  (One reviewer invoked Megamind from the 2010 movie of the same name, another compared the look to Voldemort.)  Connick would have been better off if he’d shaved his head!)

Connick doesn’t have a lot of stage experience in plays (and I haven’t seen any of them), so that may be his problem.  He seemed to me to have been working in a different performance than everyone else.  I don’t know if he was doing a bad imitation of Hugh Grant or if he was actually having trouble with his words, but he spoke at a lower volume than everyone else and did a lot of hesitating.  Even his singing was sort of off-hand—maybe because he’s a pop singer, not a musical theater singer.

(Speaking of Connick’s other career: I wondered why there was a grand piano in the foyer of Warbucks’s home, except to remind us that Connick is a piano player.  Then he has one number when he sits at the keyboard and plays a few bars as he breaks into "Something Was Missing." 

(Annie says, “Gee, Mr. Warbucks—you play the piano?” just to make the point about who’s playing the role.  Then, Connick abandons the piano so he can dance with Annie—and the piano’s never featured again.  It sure was a good thing that Connick isn’t a world-famous dressage rider, otherwise NBC would have had to put a horse in the Warbucks house!)

[Thank you for reading Part 1 of “Annie Live! (NBC, 2 December 2021).”  I invite all ROTters to return to the blog on 10 February to read the final part of my performance report on Annie Live!]