SF
Through October 4
ANYTHNG GOES Shaw Festival/Festival Theatre
By Augustine Warner
Theater is filled with classic shows.
Of course, there are often weak productions of those same classic shows.
I have seen my share, like weak productions of �My Fair Lady,�a familiar work for student productions which can suffer when some roles are weakly filled.
An example: Freddy Eynsford-Hill and �On the Street Where You Live.�
It�s easy to fill that role with someone not considered good enough for bigger roles.
That�s a bad idea because that role matters.
You can also get a classic show with no weak spots and that�s what the Shaw Festival has done with a wonderful production of Cole Porter�s �Anything Goes,� here the re-done book which removes some problematic plot lines.
Deservedly, the music stayed.
From Mary Antonini�s Reno Sweeney to Jeff Irving�s Billy Crocker to Celeste Catena�s Hope Harcourt, the show is filled with strong individual performances, along with a stellar company of singers and dancers.
It�s a silly plot but that doesn�t matter in a show with �I Get a Kick out of You,� �You�re the Top,� �Easy to Love,� �Blow, Gabriel, Blow� and the title song, �Anything Goes.�
The show takes place in musician and lyricist Cole Porter�s world, the rich and their means of transportation, here a Depression-era trans-Atlantic liner, heading east.
There are gangsters, British nobles, Wall Street nobility, a fianc�e, an evangelist and acolytes and sailors.
It all takes place on Cory Sincennes� endlessly adaptable set of the main deck of the SS American.
It�s about love and romance (no violence).
The show pivots around Crocker and Harcourt, who fell in love one night in Manhattan.
She comes from money and is engaged to marry Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Allan Louis) and falls in love with Crocker.
Lord Evelyn heads back to the ancestral manse for the wedding, with Hope and her mother, Evangeline (Sharry Flett), on the same ship.
Billy stows away on the ship to chase Hope, instead of doing his work as an assistant with Elisha Whitney (Shawn Wright), a wall streeter with the required connection of Porter�s alma mater Yale.
Also on board is evangelist Sweeney, along with �angels� Charity (Jade Repeta), Purity (Alexandra Gratton the night I saw the show), Virtue (Mikayla Stradiotto) and Chastity (Jaden Kim).
This is all from the small world Porter lived, wrote and partied in.
This might suggest there is a plot to this and there is more of a plot in this second incarnation than in the original but it�s all thin.
But, that music.
It fills the Festival Theatre.
Kimberley Rampersad is director and choreographer and that mix helps in this show because it�s all tied together so tightly in the production numbers, like the marvelous tap dance filled closing to the first act �Anything Goes� and Reno Sweeney�s legendary production number �Blow, Gabriel, Blow,� in the second act.
This is all the kind of show where you sit back, avoid questions about what�s going on and enjoy the singing and dancing because it�s all right in front of you and it�s wonderful.
Find time this summer to be in some of those Festival Theatre seats and learn as prior generations have �Anything Goes.�
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