©Seattle Post Intelligencer Dec. 2, 2000 Cole Porter Hit Sings as a Musical Comedy Improbable Plot Centers Around Two Shipboard Romances By Duston Harvey
Something funny happened to Anything Goes on the stage of the Fifth Avenue Theatre. Director David Armstrong, Fifth Avenue's new producing artistic director, presents the 1934 Broadway hit as a musical comedy, with slapstick, farce and pun-filled wordplay getting equal time with Cole Porter's well-known music and lyrics. But he's also assembled a strong-voiced cast, headlined by Dee Hoty, a long-legged belter whose Broadway career has earned her three Tony award nominations for best actress in a musical and who has the big voice and big stage presence needed for the role of nightclub singer/former evangelist Reno Sweeney. Leading man Michael Gruber, Donna English as his love interest and Colleen Hawk as a gangster's moll also have the voices to carry a Porter score that includes "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Let's Misbehave" and "All Through the Night." All are good, too, with the comedy, but it's more the forte of Seattle actor Allen Galli as Moonface Martin, a gangster disguised as a clergyman, and Bronson Pinchot as Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, a stuffy English peer warmed up romantically by Sweeney. The improbable plot centers around two shipboard romances - Billy Crocker (Gruber) loves heiress Hope Harcourt (English), who's engaged to Oakleigh, who falls for Sweeney. Before the happy ending, Billy dons a variety of disguises, is idolized as public enemy #1 and tossed into a cell with Moonface. The book seem contemporary at times - particularly in its take on Americans' adulation of celebrities, even if they're best known for killing people. The typically '30s humor runs from slapstick (the heavyset Moonface trying to eat breakfast in bed on a cramped upper berth) and swinging door farce to the Englishman's infatuation with American slang and pun-filled lines (Evelyn is accused of seducing a young Chinese woman: "You took Plum Blossom to rice paddy and brought back Plum Tart."). Armstrong uses a 1960s version of the show, which scraps several of the original numbers and replaces them with Porter hits from other productions. He also glosses over Hope's mercenary reasons for agreeing to marry Oakleigh and tightens up the final scene by keeping it on the ship rather than staging it at the Englishman's estate. That helps him keep things moving briskly, utilizing a revolving ship set- designed by Michael Anania for this production and one at Paper Mill-that rotates from the S.S. America's promenade deck to the ship's interior. It also provides multiple levels and staircases for the tap-dancing production numbers, which are the show's weakest point. The dance highlight is a bouncy Hawk and the men dancers in a physical take on "Let's Step Out" that ends with her being tossed on a balcony where a jazz band plays. And then there's the music, highlighted by Hoty's "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "Anything Goes" and "I Get a Kick Out of You," her duet with Crocker on "You're the Top," English in her duets with Crocker of "It's De-Lovely" and "All Through the Night," and Hawk in "Let's Step Out." While the leads mostly are out of New York, the bulk of the secondary roles and the ensemble in the cast of 27 are Seattle performers, as Armstrong institutes a new policy of using more local talent at the Fifth Avenue. main Anything Goes 2000 page

©Seattle Post Intelligencer
Dec. 2, 2000

Cole Porter Hit Sings as a Musical Comedy
Improbable Plot Centers Around Two Shipboard Romances
By Duston Harvey

Something funny happened to Anything Goes on the stage of the Fifth Avenue Theatre. Director David Armstrong, Fifth Avenue's new producing artistic director, presents the 1934 Broadway hit as a musical comedy, with slapstick, farce and pun-filled wordplay getting equal time with Cole Porter's well-known music and lyrics.

But he's also assembled a strong-voiced cast, headlined by Dee Hoty, a long-legged belter whose Broadway career has earned her three Tony award nominations for best actress in a musical and who has the big voice and big stage presence needed for the role of nightclub singer/former evangelist Reno Sweeney.

Leading man Michael Gruber, Donna English as his love interest and Colleen Hawk as a gangster's moll also have the voices to carry a Porter score that includes "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Let's Misbehave" and "All Through the Night."

All are good, too, with the comedy, but it's more the forte of Seattle actor Allen Galli as Moonface Martin, a gangster disguised as a clergyman, and Bronson Pinchot as Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, a stuffy English peer warmed up romantically by Sweeney.

The improbable plot centers around two shipboard romances - Billy Crocker (Gruber) loves heiress Hope Harcourt (English), who's engaged to Oakleigh, who falls for Sweeney. Before the happy ending, Billy dons a variety of disguises, is idolized as public enemy #1 and tossed into a cell with Moonface.

The book seem contemporary at times - particularly in its take on Americans' adulation of celebrities, even if they're best known for killing people.

The typically '30s humor runs from slapstick (the heavyset Moonface trying to eat breakfast in bed on a cramped upper berth) and swinging door farce to the Englishman's infatuation with American slang and pun-filled lines (Evelyn is accused of seducing a young Chinese woman: "You took Plum Blossom to rice paddy and brought back Plum Tart.").

Armstrong uses a 1960s version of the show, which scraps several of the original numbers and replaces them with Porter hits from other productions. He also glosses over Hope's mercenary reasons for agreeing to marry Oakleigh and tightens up the final scene by keeping it on the ship rather than staging it at the Englishman's estate.

That helps him keep things moving briskly, utilizing a revolving ship set- designed by Michael Anania for this production and one at Paper Mill-that rotates from the S.S. America's promenade deck to the ship's interior.

It also provides multiple levels and staircases for the tap-dancing production numbers, which are the show's weakest point. The dance highlight is a bouncy Hawk and the men dancers in a physical take on "Let's Step Out" that ends with her being tossed on a balcony where a jazz band plays.

And then there's the music, highlighted by Hoty's "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "Anything Goes" and "I Get a Kick Out of You," her duet with Crocker on "You're the Top," English in her duets with Crocker of "It's De-Lovely" and "All Through the Night," and Hawk in "Let's Step Out."

While the leads mostly are out of New York, the bulk of the secondary roles and the ensemble in the cast of 27 are Seattle performers, as Armstrong institutes a new policy of using more local talent at the Fifth Avenue.

main Anything Goes 2000 page