Annie

Crusty old Harold Gray, who wrote and drew the Little Orphan Annie comic strip from 1924 until his death in 1968, once famously defended the strip's emphasis on violence with this retort: "Sweetness and light -- who the hell wants it? What's news in the newspapers? Murder, rape, and arson. That's what stories are made of."

Sweetness and light, however, are exactly what make Annie, the enduringly popular musical version of Gray's saucer-eyed, frizzy haired orphan's adventures, such a crowd pleaser. This is demonstrated yet again in Music Theatre Louisville's bouncy production, skillfully directed by Jim Hesselman, at Iroquois Amphitheater.

Annie originally opened in New York in April 1977 and ran for 2,377 performances. One wonders how the notoriously reactionary Gray would have reacted to the "C"change -- from Conservative to Liberal -- that his creation underwent in its leap from page to stage. But his estate apparently had no qualms about depicting President Franklin D. Roosevelt, anathema to Gray, as the nation's saviour during the Depression, or having that era's homeless sarcastically sing, "We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover" for their makeshift "Hooverville" shelters and shared tin cup meals cooked over trash-can fires.

J. R. Stuart and Barbara Myerson Katz are a most engaging Franklin and Eleanor in this fast-moving romp, populated by a throng of adorable little orphan girls, the bane of slovenly, hard-drinking Miss Hannigan (Sharon Kinnison), their keeper. Miss Hannigan, the one you love to hate, always steals the show, and Kinnison excels at doing that. She's brash, funny, and pitiable at the same time, delivering with aplomb such lines as, "Why any kid would want to be an orphan I'll never know" and singing up a storm with her diatribe about "Little Girls."

With the terrific Jay Nelson as her black sheep brother Rooster Hannigan and the equally terrific Bridget Thomas as his delightfully dim-witted girlfriend Lily St. Regis (named for the hotel, she explains), Kinnison sings and dances the trio's show-stopping "Easy Street," one of the great moments in musical theater.

As Daddy Warbucks (could you guess from his name how he got so rich?), Ernie Adams is the very model of a big-hearted tycoon with all the right connections, even up to the White House. He sings robustly, paired with Debbie Sutherland King as Grace Farrell, his highly efficient secretary who keeps her designs on her boss under wraps. Praise also goes to Bo Cecil for his masterful dead-on turn as radio emcee Bert Healy. Sara E. King (who alternates in the role with Amanda Lott) is captivating as Annie, whose optimism remains intact even after fruitlessly searching for 11 years for the parents who abandoned her at the orphanage. Her philosophy about the sun coming up "Tomorrow" inspires FDR to conceive the New Deal, which Gray also excoriated along with income taxes, the welfare state and all Democrats.

In this production the problem of unpredictable animal behavior is eliminated by using a push-pull cutout of Sandy, the stray dog Annie rescues. But this fabricated Sandy gets the last word as the musical ends. "ARF" is printed on a comic-strip balloon sign that suddenly emerges from this faux mutt.