Lilla Crawford (Annie) and Sunny (Sandy) need a better ad campaign than this (inset). (
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I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for “Annie.”
It was my very first Broadway show, and I saw it from the last row of the balcony of the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon).
And though it was a long time ago — I was 11 in 1977, the year it opened — I can still recall much of it in detail.
The adorable Andrea McArdle singing the plaintive opening number, “Maybe.” Laurie Beechman (gone too soon, of cancer) getting off the bus and singing, “NYC — just got here this morning!” The lovely Sandy Faison as Grace Farrell telling Annie that “Cecille will pick out all your clothes.” Bert Healy and the lovely Boylan Sisters on the radio crooning “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile.” And of course, the incomparable Dorothy Loudon, hair going every which way, nipping from her flask and yelling into the orphans’ dingy dormitory, “Do I hear happiness in there?”
When we got home, my sister and I played the original cast recording over and over again. “Annie” and “Barry Manilow Live” alternated on our turntable.
We were pretty hip kids.
I haven’t seen the revival, directed by James Lapine, at the Palace yet, but I’ll get there before the season’s out.
However, the new ad campaign is putting me off. And I’m not the only one. Everybody at the show is “horrified,” says a source, at how Little Orphan Annie is being promoted these days.
The campaign, which was just launched last week, features a bald Anthony Warlow, as Daddy Warbucks, wearing a tuxedo and a slightly lecherous smile.
He’s placed beneath the headline: “WHO’S YOUR DADDY?”
Oh, dear.
As a source says, “Poor Anthony Warlow. Big talent from Australia. Makes his Broadway debut and is the star of one of the more creepy ads in Broadway history.”
Creepy, indeed. Is this an ad for a Broadway musical — or NAMBLA?
The campaign has the whiff of desperation about it. “Annie” is posting respectable grosses — about $850,000 a week — but it’s only playing to houses that are 75 percent full.
By contrast, rival shows such as “The Lion King” and “Wicked” are raking in nearly $2 million a week. And they’ve been around for years.
Also flat-footing “Annie” is “Cinderella,” which is doing more than $1 million a week despite reviews that should have turned it into a pumpkin.
But the real threat to the little redhead is “Matilda,” which opens April 11. It’s already sold $14 million worth of tickets and, in previews, is grossing as much as “Annie.”
Factor in a Tony for Best Musical, which is for “Matilda” to lose, and those orphans are going to be trounced by the new kid on the block.
From the start, there was some confusion about the tone this “Annie” intended to strike. Katie Finneran, who plays Miss Hannigan, said in an interview that she saw the character as a desperate woman out of a Eugene O’Neill play.
(“Some night I’ll step on their freckles”? Sure sounds like something out of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” to me.)
Lapine, in the same interview said, “It’s OK to be angry in musicals.”
The implication was that “Annie,” which is set during the Depression, would reflect our own troubled economic times.
But then other members of the creative team, including the producers, gave interviews in which they touted the show as being a musical “that we know will appeal to kids everywhere.”
Look.
“Annie” is a family show. Polished, witty, slyly put together, to be sure, but a family show. It should do fine during the summer when school’s out, and then take a hit in September.
And “WHO’S YOUR DADDY?” won’t help.
I only pray that by then it’s not “Call Me Daddy.”