© Backstage Magazine backstage.com December 28, 2000 (excerpt) By David-Edward Hughes
Light-years away from Hedwig, but with pleasures of its own, is Anything Goes at the 5th Avenue Theatre. Its Cole Porter score is as de-lovely as ever, but one has to slog through the old Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse script (revised from Bolton and Wodehouse's abandoned shipwreck-centered version) between numbers. 5th Avenue's new artistic director, David Armstrong, directed and choreographed with attention to style and shtick, Michael Anania's shipboard set was amusing and versatile, and a well-blended cast of Broadway vets and Seattle stalwarts kept the show largely entertaining. First and foremost among the cast was Michael Gruber as Billy Crocker, singing the Porter tunes with panache and deftly avoiding the inherent pitfalls of a role written rather schizophrenically as a comic/romantic lead. Broadway belter par excellence Dee Hoty gave her all to the songs originally written for Ethel Merman, and she executed the choreography with class; but, songs aside, the role of Reno Sweeney is pretty empty and thin as written. Hoty perked up every time she shared the stage or a song with Bronson Pinchot's blissful and broadly comic object of her heart's desire, the twitty Brit Sir Evelyn. Seattle's Allen Galli's mild-mannered Public Enemy No. 13, Moonface Martin, was a savvy tribute to the character actors who once played such comic gangsters to perfection on stage and screen in the golden age of Hollywood and Broadway, and equal kudos to Ellen McLain's overbearing matriarch Mrs. Harcourt. Donna English sang sweetly as the dim ingénue Hope Harcourt; Peter Silbert was perfectly pixilated as the often-inebriated millionaire Eli Whitney, and the largely Seattle-based supporting ensemble tapped their toes and belted those standards with precision and polish. main Anything Goes 2000 page

Light-years away from Hedwig, but with pleasures of its own, is Anything Goes at the 5th Avenue Theatre. Its Cole Porter score is as de-lovely as ever, but one has to slog through the old Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse script (revised from Bolton and Wodehouse's abandoned shipwreck-centered version) between numbers. 5th Avenue's new artistic director, David Armstrong, directed and choreographed with attention to style and shtick, Michael Anania's shipboard set was amusing and versatile, and a well-blended cast of Broadway vets and Seattle stalwarts kept the show largely entertaining.

First and foremost among the cast was Michael Gruber as Billy Crocker, singing the Porter tunes with panache and deftly avoiding the inherent pitfalls of a role written rather schizophrenically as a comic/romantic lead. Broadway belter par excellence Dee Hoty gave her all to the songs originally written for Ethel Merman, and she executed the choreography with class; but, songs aside, the role of Reno Sweeney is pretty empty and thin as written. Hoty perked up every time she shared the stage or a song with Bronson Pinchot's blissful and broadly comic object of her heart's desire, the twitty Brit Sir Evelyn. Seattle's Allen Galli's mild-mannered Public Enemy No. 13, Moonface Martin, was a savvy tribute to the character actors who once played such comic gangsters to perfection on stage and screen in the golden age of Hollywood and Broadway, and equal kudos to Ellen McLain's overbearing matriarch Mrs. Harcourt. Donna English sang sweetly as the dim ingénue Hope Harcourt; Peter Silbert was perfectly pixilated as the often-inebriated millionaire Eli Whitney, and the largely Seattle-based supporting ensemble tapped their toes and belted those standards with precision and polish.

main Anything Goes 2000 page