BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A few years ago at a revival of Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan all the little girls sitting near me were poised on the edges of their seats, rapt. What would happen next?
The connection between the people onstage and the little people in the audience made the show electric.
The most you can say about the current revival of Annie at the Aronoff Center as part of Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series, is that it is competent and professional. It gets the job done.
Those are dreary descriptions of live theater. Then look at your ticket stub and see $51.50.
Annie, celebrating its 20th anniversary, can be an irresistible show, brassy and rambunctious with a chorus line of orphans whose mop tops bounce and braids fly.
It's gleeful satire with an affectionate heart. One orphan isn't enough? It gives you seven. The smallest one tap dances (sort of). The orphan needs a dog. And Christmas. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To reward FDR for showing up, Annie gives him the New Deal.
There's a staircase to high-kick down. (Eat your heart out, Hello, Dolly!) And billionaire Daddy Warbucks to wrap up the happy ending in pots of money. The show has everything but the kitchen sink.
It even has an anthem -- "Tomorrow," sung by zillions of little girls ever since. And how can you not love a show that loves New York? "N.Y.C." is nothing short of another love song to the grungy city that never sleeps.
There's a great sense of professionalism to this production, but not much of a sense of fun as Annie (Brittny Kissinger) stages a break from the orphanage and its rotten matron Miss Hannigan to find her parents (lost for 10 years.)
She finds adventure in the city, is almost an unwitting victim in an evil plot by Miss Hannigan and her equally rotten brother (Laurent Giroux) and finds true love (of a paternal nature.)
Conrad John Schuck (you might remember him as Sgt. Enright on McMillan and Wife) is an old hand at gruff and workaholic Daddy Warbucks. He gives the show's best performance as the industrialist who's been waiting for a little girl to love.
The other standout is Mr. Giroux as sleazy Rooster Hannigan. He just flows through "Easy Street," a song-and-dance paean to where the Hannigans want to be.
What's needed for Miss Hannigan is a great comedian. Instead we get Sally Struthers who more than mugs through the role. She rolls her eyes back till we see their whites. She uses her tongue a lot. Sometimes it seems as much a fit as a performance.
The touring revival is directed by one of its original creators, Martin Charnin. He directed the Broadway production and subsequent tours.
He's done some tinkering, shaving away some semi-dark moments, and the show's sense of satire to make it a more straightforward musical comedy, sans undertones.
He's broadened some of the comedy. Never before has the show been so unconcerned with relationships or has schtick been allowed to stand-in for stage presence. You have to wonder what he was thinking, when he got it right the first time, 20 years ago
Annie, through Nov. 1, Procter & Gamble Hall, Aronoff Center. 241-7469.
