And Stratford has a second hit musical, Cole Porter's Anything Goes. Stratford's Anything Goes is the last Broadway version of Cole Porter's musical, with additional songs not in the original show, and P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton's book tricked up by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, and most recently fixed up by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman. The plot is foolish enough to have required endless tinkering, but this most recent updating doesn't lose its `30s flavor. Despite major miscastings, Stratford's revival is a crowd-pleasing, fun-filled picnic.
What's wrong is that Stratford's resident muscom diva, Cynthia Dale, is too inalterably ladylike for the role of Reno Sweeney, evangelist turned nightclub singer. Reno was written for the legendary, brassy Ethel Merman. Still, however over-refined, Dale has great charm, sings brilliantly in all styles, and here reveals no little ability to tap dance.
Worse miscasting is Michael Gruber as Billy Crocker, whom Reno describes as a pretty boy. If not exactly homely, Gruber looks, at best, like a young George C. Scott. But his singing and acting style is right out of a 1930s movie, and he performs the role ideally. Finally, I can't get upset about the stuffy, foolish Lord Evelyn Oakleigh's not being played, as usual, by a gawky, funny-looking geek, but rather by a really handsome man who sings and dances superbly. Laird Mackintosh gives up none of Lord Evelyn's comedy but adds dimension to the part.
Other standouts in the large cast are Sheila McCarthy as a gangster's moll who goes through sailors like treats at a buffet, Elizabeth DeGrazia as the sweet debutante Hope Harcoat, Jimmy Spadola as Moonface Martin -- only the 13th most-wanted US criminal -- and Jason Sermonia and Julius Sermonia as acrobatic Chinese. (What is it with the emphasis on acrobats? I've seen two shows in California, one in Rochester, and two at Stratford that featured acrobatics, all in one month.) Everyone tap dances with aplomb, even actors playing rich old folks, like classical-repertory veterans Douglas Chamberlain and Patricia Collins.
I don't know any previous work of director and choreographer Anne Allen, but she makes this show zip along with infectious speed and nonstop hilarity, makes it dance like the best Hollywood musicals of the `30s, and glosses over any of its flaws with irresistible jollity.
This is a big show for the smaller Avon Theater, but it works. Patrick Clark's ship set is necessarily scaled down, but it opens to display interiors and accommodate all kinds of slapstick sailors and showgirls, gangsters, aristocrats and whatnot else. And Clark's flashy costumes are a hoot. Berthold Carriere conducts and directs the great Porter score as well as it is ever likely to be treated.
