Annie

Leapin' Lizards! Can it really be time for another revival of Annie? The Paper Mill is reminding us that this is the musical's 25th anniversary. Although it seems like yesterday, it has been 19 years since the Paper Mill last staged the musical that ran five-and-a-half years on Broadway. It should come as no surprise that the gargantuan success of the musical that writer Thomas Meehan, composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Martin Charnin fashioned from Harold Gray's popular, long-running comic strip, "Little Orphan Annie," would eventually multiply, divide and breed innumerable productions, both large and small, throughout the civilized world.

While countless productions continue to be presented at regional and community theater groups everywhere there is a little red head with a big voice, Annie is being staged at the Paper Mill in its more appropriately lavish form.

Annie is the quintessence of a fast fading formula-musical genre whose very predictability makes it endearing. For all its familiarity and general lack of excitement, both musically and dramatically, Annie is quietly appealing and reassuring the way a short return to nostalgia brings comfort and security after your boundaries have been stretched with new concepts. Annie isn't an old musical, it just seems like one. That's comforting in a way, but just a bit boring.

Under Greg Ganakas's direction, the show and cast go through predictable patterns as if nothing -- short of that beloved mongrel Sandy forgetting an entrance, or being naughty on stage -- could alter the acutely dimensionless activity.

In Annie, the Depression Era couldn't be less depressing. Even in December, neither the plight of the homeless huddled around outdoor fires, nor the cruelty at the Municipal Orphanage will allow any ill wind to chill the warm glow that exudes from Annie and her glad-ragged cohorts. There is a decided pleasure in seeing them cavort in synchronized waves of show biz expertise, while their tyrannical, blowzy matron of horrors, Miss Hannigan, swigs her hooch and brandishes a paddling stick with all the menace of a demented trick or treater. Sara Hyland may be one of the more sophisticated Annies to melt a capitalist's heart. Tall, self-assured and perky, Hyland takes an aggressive, no-nonsense approach to Annie that backfires only when she needs to be vulnerable. But will someone please take that horrible red Medusa-curls wig and burn it? Notwithstanding her mostly off-pitch singing, Hyland nevertheless belts out the requisite notes with gusto. Even with the obligatory Yul Brynner coif, Rich Hebert, brings a tough-and-tender distinction to the role of Warbucks. Too bad he only gets to use his fine baritone voice in his one solo, "Something Was Missing." As much a caricature as it is a character, the role of Miss Hannigan gives Catherine Cox an opportunity to send subtleties to the wind as she mugs her way effectively through "Little Girls," and "Easy Street." I doubt if Oliver Warbucks ever had a more stunning looking secretary than Crista Moore, whose lovely soprano voice is underused but whose radiant presence glows brighter than the fully lit Christmas tree. Eric Michael Gillett is tongue-in-cheek-ily effective as F.D.R. As Annie's bogus parents, both Jim Walton and Tia Speros bring a vaudevillian flavor to their respective portrayals of Rooster and Lily St. Regis. The half-dozen rebellious orphans and supporting cast seemed to confront each new scene with the confidence that comes with a "New Deal."

Standout among the orphans is pint-size Jaclyn M Neidenthal. Catch her snappy cartwheel and split. The show has been pleasantly choreographed by prescription by Linda Goodrich. The handsome settings by Michael Anania (but why would Warbucks hang the Mona Lisa and Blue Boy twenty feet above eye level in his study?), as well as other production values are all first rate.

For those of us who have been Annie-sized for the past 25 years, the magic is slightly muted. For the "Tomorrow" generation, Annie still works like magic. Arf!