'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!]