2 months ago
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ANNIE ★★★★
Lyric Theatre, QPAC, until January 31
Annie is a 1977 Broadway smash based on a 100-year-old comic strip about a plucky orphan girl adopted by a benevolent billionaire.
The musical, which won seven Tony Awards, packages up the escapist pleasures of Depression-era movies about rich socialites, with songs of unbridled optimism in the face of grinding hardship. Like Star Wars, which opened a month later, it was exactly what audiences were craving in a gloomy decade, and it ran for six years.
Matilda Casey, Anthony Warlow and Greg Page in Annie. Casey shares the title role with Isabella Hayden and Dakota Chanel.Credit: Daniel Boud
So what has Annie got to offer Brisbane audiences in 2026? Plenty, it turns out, unless you’re the hopelessly cynical sort.
Because of the physical demands of eight shows a week, three girls share the lead role of red-headed Annie (Matilda Casey, Dakota Chanel and Isabella Hayden), while 16 more cover the roles of the other seven orphans.
Many were chosen from local auditions, and to see them sing and dance songs like It’s the Hard Knock Life with the polish of musical veterans is quite astonishing. Hayden played the title role on opening night, and the clarity of her high notes was extraordinary.
As for the show’s dog, it doesn’t put a paw wrong.
Debora Krizak (left) plays the wicked orphanage matron Miss Hannigan, and Amanda Lea LaVergne is Grace Farrell. The musical is based on Harold Gray’s long-running comic strip Little Orphan Annie. Credit: Daniel Boud
They say you should never work with kids or animals, but that has never stopped Anthony Warlow, who has played bald-headed industrialist Daddy Warbucks since 2000. Handpicked to perform the role on Broadway in 2012, he also starred that year in the Australian production directed by Karen Johnson Mortimer, who recreates her work here.
Warlow makes it all look so easy. His portrayal of the billionaire bachelor with a sudden affection for a penniless child is both convincing and non-creepy, as he delivers the songs NYC and Something Was Missing with unaffected emotion and charm.
On the other hand, Debora Krizak, who plays the tyrannical, alcoholic orphanage matron Miss Hannigan, gets most of the best lines – “Did I hear happiness in here?” she demands, on bursting in on her charges. Easy Street, sung with partners-in-crime Rooster (Keanu Gonzalez) and Lily (Mackenzie Dunn), is a show-stopper.
The original Yellow Wiggle, Greg Page, plays the wheelchair-bound US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose “New Deal” of government intervention created employment for Americans and hope of recovery after the Wall Street crash.
A scene from Annie’s Sydney production, with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Martin Charnin.Credit: Daniel Boud
The show asks us to believe that Warbucks and Annie inspire the government to take this world-changing economic leap of faith with nothing more than a spirited rendition of the iconic song Tomorrow.
Facile? Absolutely, but as we’ve seen in the news lately, billionaires cosying up to US presidents does happen, albeit more to vaporise jobs than create them.
While it may look like a kids’ show, Annie has a lot to say about the here and now. Things may appear grim, but the sun can and will come out, hope can translate into action, and political change is possible. Leaping lizards, it’s joyous stuff. All we need now is an Annie to tackle our own cost-of-living crisis.
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