THEATER REVIEW | 'ANYTHING GOES'
Anything Goes, with Sutton Foster, center, a Roundabout Theater Company revival at the Stephen Sondheim Theater.More Photos »
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: April 7, 2011
Who needs a brass section when you’ve got Sutton Foster? As the nightclub evangelist Reno Sweeney in the zesty new revival of “Anything Goes,” which opened on Thursday night at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, Ms. Foster has the voice of a trumpet and a big, gleaming presence that floods the house. When she leads the show-stopping “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” you figure that if no horn-tooting archangel appears, it’s only because he’s afraid of the competition.
Multimedia
Related
ArtsBeat Blog: Behind the Poster: 'Anything Goes'(December 16, 2010)
Review: Broadway Revival (Oct. 20, 1987)
Review: Original Broadway Production (Nov. 22, 1934) [pdf]
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Joel Grey and Sutton Foster in the Broadway revival of "Anything Goes."
More Photos »
Ms. Foster is playing a part originated by the all-time musical-comedy queen of brass, Ethel Merman, who was said to be the heart and soul (as well as lungs) of “Anything Goes” when it opened on Broadway in 1934. Certainly that is the role served to the brimming point by Ms. Foster in Kathleen Marshall’s production of this willfully silly tale of love, deception and celebrity-chasing on the high seas, which features a deluxe candy box of songs by Cole Porter.
Both goofy and sexy, shruggingly insouciant and rigorously polished, Ms. Foster’s performance embodies the essence of escapist entertainment in the 1930s, when hard times called for bold smiles, tough wisecracks and defiant fantasies of over-the-top opulence. That’s the tone that Ms. Marshall is going for in this Roundabout Theater Companyproduction. And to achieve it she’s enlisted a team that includes Derek McLane (for the bright Deco sets), Martin Pakledinaz (for the matching sassy costumes) and the peerless Rob Fisher (for the musical supervision and vocal arrangements).
No revisionist shadows for this version of the show that gave us the immortal standards “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Anything Goes,” among others. Ms. Marshall and her singing dancers and comic actors — a motley crew that includes Joel Grey, Jessica Walter, Adam Godley and John McMartin — are here not to make sense of the world but to help us forget it for a couple of hours. (Think of it as an alternative for folks who aren’t ready for the foulmouthed “Book of Mormon.”)
So be willing to suspend your need for logic and your intolerance for groaning jokes. There’s a reason this musical is called “Anything Goes.” It’s a farrago of zinger-stocked dialogue, vaudeville-style antics and musical numbers only pretending to co-exist as a coherent plot.
The vicissitudes the original production underwent included having to jettison a large part of the original script (which involved a shipwreck) after a fire on a cruise ship killed 134 people. The first team of writers, P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, had moved on to other projects, so Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse were brought on, beginning a collaboration that would peak with the long-running “Life With Father.” (The current version features additions and revisions by Timothy Crouse, son of Russel, and John Weidman, who had performed the same function for the1982 Lincoln Center Theater revival, which starred Patti LuPone.)
Showbiz legend has it that the title came about during chaotic out-of-town rehearsals when the leading man, William Gaxton, was asked if he would object to making an early entrance and replied, “In this kind of a spot, anything goes!” And so it does. If the show could be said to be about anything, it’s about improvising and vamping your way out of a tight corner.
Consider some of the dramatis personae who assemble in New York on the deck of a London-bound luxury liner: Reno Sweeney, the onetime evangelist who has become a naughty nightclub star (imagine Aimee Semple McPherson transformed into Texas Guinan); Moonface Martin (Mr. Grey), a gangster fleeing the law by pretending to be a priest; and Billy Crocker (Colin Donnell) a young stockbroker who winds up pretending to be a sailor (and later a gangster) to pursue a lovely debutante.
That would be Hope Harcourt (Laura Osnes) whose nouveau pauvre mother, Evangeline (Ms. Walter), has betrothed her daughter to the wealthy Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Mr. Godley), in a bid to restore the family fortunes. In the meantime the ship’s Captain (Walter Charles) is desperately looking for a few famous names to parade before his celebrity-hungry passengers. (The first line of the show’s title song is “Times have changed,” but in some ways they obviously haven’t.)
How these mixed nuts collaborate with and fool one another involves much strutting of assorted, sometimes tedious, comic styles. As a nearsighted Wall Street tycoon (and Crocker’s boss), Mr. McMartin, that invaluable Broadway veteran, brings a delicious giddiness to elderly lust and Ivy League juvenility. Playing an English aristo in love with American slang, a very game Mr. Godley (“Private Lives” on Broadway) makes merry with malapropisms. Jessica Stone is a salty treat as a sailor-chasing gangster’s moll. And Mr. Grey does his time-tested combination of music-hall shtick and “little ol’ me” puckishness that became his post-“Cabaret” signature when he appeared in “George M!” 43 years ago.
The jokes and double entendres tend to be of the collegiate variety show ilk. But even when they misfired, I kept grinning because I knew that they were pointing the way to yet another knockout production number. For that is where this revival comes into its glory.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Laura Osnes and Colin Donnell, Astaire and Rogers-style, in Kathleen Marshall's production of “Anything Goes.” More Photos »
Multimedia
Related
ArtsBeat Blog: Behind the Poster: 'Anything Goes'(December 16, 2010)
Review: Broadway Revival (Oct. 20, 1987)
Review: Original Broadway Production (Nov. 22, 1934) [pdf]
Ms. Marshall, whose career as a director-cum-choreographer has included sky-scraping highs (“The Pajama Game”) and bottom-scraping lows (“Grease”), is on top again here. She has clearly made a close study of 1930s film musicals and rings diverse variations on styles made famous by Astaire, Hermes Pan and Busby Berkeley. But whereas earlier Broadway evocations of the same period, including “42nd Street” (1980 and 2001) and “Never Gonna Dance” (2003), had a bottled, artificial quality, this “Anything Goes” exudes the effervescence of a freshly poured gin fizz.
For the pas de deux between the young lovers, Billy and Hope, Ms. Marshall reinvents the supple chemistry of Astaire and Rogers. When they’re only talking or even singing, Billy and (especially) Hope are about as exciting as most moony musical ingénues are. But when Mr. Donnell and Ms. Osnes go cheek to cheek, it’s with a yearning, melting elegance that makes you believe in love as a state of grace.
Of course it doesn’t hurt that what they’re dancing to are “Easy to Love” and “It’s De-Lovely.” There’s no underestimating the abiding infectiousness of Porter’s best songs. (You may recall some from other shows; Porter wrote numbers that could fit comfortably into many different productions.)
And when Ms. Marshall turns up the heat for big ensemble interpretations of “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and “Anything Goes,” watch out. Tapping, shimmying, twirling and writhing, the dancers combine military discipline with white-hot sensuality, and the dopey promise of all those insinuating one-liners is more than fulfilled.
It’s Ms. Foster who leads these numbers, both as a singer and as a dancer. And her triple mastery of words, music and moves is unmatched by any performer on Broadway at the moment. It’s not just that she nails every step, note and joke. It’s the attitude with which she does so — an aw-shucks kind of casualness coupled with a dizzy exhibitionist’s delight.
Her pleasure in her material creates a sheen that illuminates everyone around her. Mr. Donnell, Mr. Grey and Mr. Godley are never better than in their duets with Ms. Foster, energetic competitions in putting over some of Porter’s cleverest lyrics.
Even tapping frenziedly with a chorus line, she seems to be conducting a happy, quippy dialogue with her fellow dancers, an implicit call-and-response between a perfectly in-sync star and a great ensemble. (“Can you top this?” “Oh, yes I can.”) At such moments Ms. Foster’s Reno becomes an evangelist of musical-comedy joy. When she turns her toothy, triumphant smile on the audience there’s no doubt that she’s made many converts.
ANYTHING GOES
Music and lyrics by Cole Porter; original book by P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman; directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall; music supervisor/vocal arranger, Rob Fisher; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Martin Pakledinaz; lighting by Peter Kaczorowski; sound by Brian Ronan; additional orchestrations by Bill Elliott; original orchestrations by Michael Gibson; dance arrangements, David Chase; music director/conductor, James Lowe; music coordinator, Seymour Red Press; hair and wig design by Paul Huntley; makeup by Angelina Avallone; associate director, Marc Bruni; associate choreographer, Vince Pesce; executive producer, Sydney Beers; associate artistic director, Scott Ellis. Presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, Todd Haimes, artistic director. At theStephen Sondheim Theater, 124 West 43rd Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200 ;telecharge.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: Sutton Foster (Reno Sweeney), Joel Grey (Moonface Martin), Colin Donnell (Billy Crocker), Adam Godley (Lord Evelyn Oakleigh), Laura Osnes (Hope Harcourt), Jessica Stone (Erma), Walter Charles (Captain), Robert Creighton (Ship’s Purser), Andrew Cao (Luke), Raymond J. Lee (John), John McMartin (Elisha Whitney) and Jessica Walter(Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt).
A version of this review appeared in print on April 8, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.
Who needs a brass section when you’ve got Sutton Foster? As the nightclub evangelist Reno Sweeney in the zesty new revival of “Anything Goes,” which opened on Thursday night at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, Ms. Foster has the voice of a trumpet and a big, gleaming presence that floods the house. When she leads the show-stopping “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” you figure that if no horn-tooting archangel appears, it’s only because he’s afraid of the competition.
Multimedia
Related
ArtsBeat Blog: Behind the Poster: 'Anything Goes'(December 16, 2010)
Review: Broadway Revival (Oct. 20, 1987)
Review: Original Broadway Production (Nov. 22, 1934) [pdf]
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Joel Grey and Sutton Foster in the Broadway revival of "Anything Goes."
More Photos »
Ms. Foster is playing a part originated by the all-time musical-comedy queen of brass, Ethel Merman, who was said to be the heart and soul (as well as lungs) of “Anything Goes” when it opened on Broadway in 1934. Certainly that is the role served to the brimming point by Ms. Foster in Kathleen Marshall’s production of this willfully silly tale of love, deception and celebrity-chasing on the high seas, which features a deluxe candy box of songs by Cole Porter.
Both goofy and sexy, shruggingly insouciant and rigorously polished, Ms. Foster’s performance embodies the essence of escapist entertainment in the 1930s, when hard times called for bold smiles, tough wisecracks and defiant fantasies of over-the-top opulence. That’s the tone that Ms. Marshall is going for in this Roundabout Theater Companyproduction. And to achieve it she’s enlisted a team that includes Derek McLane (for the bright Deco sets), Martin Pakledinaz (for the matching sassy costumes) and the peerless Rob Fisher (for the musical supervision and vocal arrangements).
No revisionist shadows for this version of the show that gave us the immortal standards “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Anything Goes,” among others. Ms. Marshall and her singing dancers and comic actors — a motley crew that includes Joel Grey, Jessica Walter, Adam Godley and John McMartin — are here not to make sense of the world but to help us forget it for a couple of hours. (Think of it as an alternative for folks who aren’t ready for the foulmouthed “Book of Mormon.”)
So be willing to suspend your need for logic and your intolerance for groaning jokes. There’s a reason this musical is called “Anything Goes.” It’s a farrago of zinger-stocked dialogue, vaudeville-style antics and musical numbers only pretending to co-exist as a coherent plot.
The vicissitudes the original production underwent included having to jettison a large part of the original script (which involved a shipwreck) after a fire on a cruise ship killed 134 people. The first team of writers, P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, had moved on to other projects, so Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse were brought on, beginning a collaboration that would peak with the long-running “Life With Father.” (The current version features additions and revisions by Timothy Crouse, son of Russel, and John Weidman, who had performed the same function for the1982 Lincoln Center Theater revival, which starred Patti LuPone.)
Showbiz legend has it that the title came about during chaotic out-of-town rehearsals when the leading man, William Gaxton, was asked if he would object to making an early entrance and replied, “In this kind of a spot, anything goes!” And so it does. If the show could be said to be about anything, it’s about improvising and vamping your way out of a tight corner.
Consider some of the dramatis personae who assemble in New York on the deck of a London-bound luxury liner: Reno Sweeney, the onetime evangelist who has become a naughty nightclub star (imagine Aimee Semple McPherson transformed into Texas Guinan); Moonface Martin (Mr. Grey), a gangster fleeing the law by pretending to be a priest; and Billy Crocker (Colin Donnell) a young stockbroker who winds up pretending to be a sailor (and later a gangster) to pursue a lovely debutante.
That would be Hope Harcourt (Laura Osnes) whose nouveau pauvre mother, Evangeline (Ms. Walter), has betrothed her daughter to the wealthy Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Mr. Godley), in a bid to restore the family fortunes. In the meantime the ship’s Captain (Walter Charles) is desperately looking for a few famous names to parade before his celebrity-hungry passengers. (The first line of the show’s title song is “Times have changed,” but in some ways they obviously haven’t.)
How these mixed nuts collaborate with and fool one another involves much strutting of assorted, sometimes tedious, comic styles. As a nearsighted Wall Street tycoon (and Crocker’s boss), Mr. McMartin, that invaluable Broadway veteran, brings a delicious giddiness to elderly lust and Ivy League juvenility. Playing an English aristo in love with American slang, a very game Mr. Godley (“Private Lives” on Broadway) makes merry with malapropisms. Jessica Stone is a salty treat as a sailor-chasing gangster’s moll. And Mr. Grey does his time-tested combination of music-hall shtick and “little ol’ me” puckishness that became his post-“Cabaret” signature when he appeared in “George M!” 43 years ago.
The jokes and double entendres tend to be of the collegiate variety show ilk. But even when they misfired, I kept grinning because I knew that they were pointing the way to yet another knockout production number. For that is where this revival comes into its glory.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Laura Osnes and Colin Donnell, Astaire and Rogers-style, in Kathleen Marshall's production of “Anything Goes.” More Photos »
Multimedia
Related
ArtsBeat Blog: Behind the Poster: 'Anything Goes'(December 16, 2010)
Review: Broadway Revival (Oct. 20, 1987)
Review: Original Broadway Production (Nov. 22, 1934) [pdf]
Ms. Marshall, whose career as a director-cum-choreographer has included sky-scraping highs (“The Pajama Game”) and bottom-scraping lows (“Grease”), is on top again here. She has clearly made a close study of 1930s film musicals and rings diverse variations on styles made famous by Astaire, Hermes Pan and Busby Berkeley. But whereas earlier Broadway evocations of the same period, including “42nd Street” (1980 and 2001) and “Never Gonna Dance” (2003), had a bottled, artificial quality, this “Anything Goes” exudes the effervescence of a freshly poured gin fizz.
For the pas de deux between the young lovers, Billy and Hope, Ms. Marshall reinvents the supple chemistry of Astaire and Rogers. When they’re only talking or even singing, Billy and (especially) Hope are about as exciting as most moony musical ingénues are. But when Mr. Donnell and Ms. Osnes go cheek to cheek, it’s with a yearning, melting elegance that makes you believe in love as a state of grace.
Of course it doesn’t hurt that what they’re dancing to are “Easy to Love” and “It’s De-Lovely.” There’s no underestimating the abiding infectiousness of Porter’s best songs. (You may recall some from other shows; Porter wrote numbers that could fit comfortably into many different productions.)
And when Ms. Marshall turns up the heat for big ensemble interpretations of “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and “Anything Goes,” watch out. Tapping, shimmying, twirling and writhing, the dancers combine military discipline with white-hot sensuality, and the dopey promise of all those insinuating one-liners is more than fulfilled.
It’s Ms. Foster who leads these numbers, both as a singer and as a dancer. And her triple mastery of words, music and moves is unmatched by any performer on Broadway at the moment. It’s not just that she nails every step, note and joke. It’s the attitude with which she does so — an aw-shucks kind of casualness coupled with a dizzy exhibitionist’s delight.
Her pleasure in her material creates a sheen that illuminates everyone around her. Mr. Donnell, Mr. Grey and Mr. Godley are never better than in their duets with Ms. Foster, energetic competitions in putting over some of Porter’s cleverest lyrics.
Even tapping frenziedly with a chorus line, she seems to be conducting a happy, quippy dialogue with her fellow dancers, an implicit call-and-response between a perfectly in-sync star and a great ensemble. (“Can you top this?” “Oh, yes I can.”) At such moments Ms. Foster’s Reno becomes an evangelist of musical-comedy joy. When she turns her toothy, triumphant smile on the audience there’s no doubt that she’s made many converts.
ANYTHING GOES
Music and lyrics by Cole Porter; original book by P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman; directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall; music supervisor/vocal arranger, Rob Fisher; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Martin Pakledinaz; lighting by Peter Kaczorowski; sound by Brian Ronan; additional orchestrations by Bill Elliott; original orchestrations by Michael Gibson; dance arrangements, David Chase; music director/conductor, James Lowe; music coordinator, Seymour Red Press; hair and wig design by Paul Huntley; makeup by Angelina Avallone; associate director, Marc Bruni; associate choreographer, Vince Pesce; executive producer, Sydney Beers; associate artistic director, Scott Ellis. Presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, Todd Haimes, artistic director. At theStephen Sondheim Theater, 124 West 43rd Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200 ;telecharge.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: Sutton Foster (Reno Sweeney), Joel Grey (Moonface Martin), Colin Donnell (Billy Crocker), Adam Godley (Lord Evelyn Oakleigh), Laura Osnes (Hope Harcourt), Jessica Stone (Erma), Walter Charles (Captain), Robert Creighton (Ship’s Purser), Andrew Cao (Luke), Raymond J. Lee (John), John McMartin (Elisha Whitney) and Jessica Walter(Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt).
A version of this review appeared in print on April 8, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.
