Yes, there are six minutes of tap dancing at the end of Act One.
If, like Jonathan Groff, you’ve compulsively rewatched footage of past Anything Goes revivals, that information alone may be justification enough to check out the Shaw Festival’s new production of the jazz age Cole Porter musical.
In director-choreographer Kimberley Rampersad’s take on the iconic title number, four sailors and four showgirls weave around the stage, alternating between tapping in unison, in smaller groups, and individually. Behind them, several others prepare to belt out the song’s percussive chorus and join in with a few simple steps before the orchestra trumpets the final chords. It’s fizzy and old-school — a musical comedy tonic.
A couple more large-scale numbers, including the brassy showstopper “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” arrive with similar aplomb. But the rest of the production’s sailing is a little rockier, often due to the show’s book, which remains quite bloated even after undergoing a handful of revisions over the material’s 91-year history. (Having six credited book writers is a red flag.)
The plot mixes a crime caper with a love rectangle. Gangster Moonface Martin (Michael Therriault) is on the run from law enforcement. Nightclub singer Reno Sweeney (Mary Antonini) adores stockbroker’s assistant Billy Crocker (Jeff Irving), who’s enamoured with debutante Hope Harcourt (Celeste Catena), herself stuck in an arranged-ish marriage with Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Allan Louis). And almost everything happens on a cruise liner.
As the script pivots between romance and farce, Rampersad rides the stylistic waves, creating a production that’s sometimes grounded, sometimes cartoonish. These swerves from tender serenade (“Easy to Love,” “I Get a Kick Out of You”) to blown-up physical comedy don’t make for a hugely cohesive experience, but the material demands them. Typical is an exchange where the ship’s captain (David Adams) furiously rifles through a clipboard holding the guest list, distraught that there are no celebrities on board. He flips to a page with a name that stokes his excitement — “Wait a minute… Napoleon!” — before his assistant (Jay Turvey) cuts in: “That’s the dessert menu.” The intentionally groan-worthy nature of these hijinks is endearing at first, but grows slightly predictable over the show’s two-hour-and-30-minute runtime.
Aside from the aforementioned full-cast numbers, Act One involves a significant proportion of duets (“You’re the Top,” “It’s De-Lovely,” the superfluous “Friendship”). Rampersad makes them visually interesting by maneuvering the singers up and down a tall, white, rotating staircase — the primary permanent fixture of Cory Sincennes’ metallic set, which uses an upstage grid of opaque portholes to evoke the requisite naval atmosphere. In the mid-size sailor numbers (“There’s No Cure Like Travel,” “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair”), the choreography gets muddier, with the dancers tending to cluster awkwardly, unbalancing the stage image.
Antonini brings supreme confidence to the demanding role of Reno, which has been played by Ethel Merman, Patti LuPone, and Sutton Foster. This pays off when the character is belting out explosive nightclub numbers in dazzling period garb (crisply designed by Sincennes). Elsewhere, Reno’s utter self-assuredness clashes with the fact that Billy rejected her deeply felt romantic advances in the first scene. Did this not hurt at all? While the script does have her gradually getting over Billy, in this production, the process seems oddly lacking in friction.
As the sensitive Hope and the dorky Billy, Catena and Irving are wide-eyed and sincere, offering a capable rendition of the classic ingénue-and-leading-man dynamic. And while Moonface and Evelyn ostensibly exist for comedic relief, Therriault and Louis’ performances prove surprisingly down-to-earth as well — a choice that helps balance out the broader physical antics required of the many other side characters.
I always find myself laughing at Anything Goes’ title. In the context of the show, Reno sings the phrase after the ship’s crew decides to start praising Moonface (and another perceived vagrant) as a celebrity: “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking / But now, God knows / Anything goes.” But the criminals’ immunity from arrest disappears just a couple scenes later… so, does anything go? And, if we want to read into it, were the 1930s even all that liberated? For me, these questions float atop the material’s surface, coating much of it with a lightly ironic glaze that’s strangely fitting for a time when the definition of liberty remains fiercely contested. While Rampersad’s earnest staging doesn’t directly engage with this layer of ambiguity, the inherent distance between today and the Great Depression means it can be felt anyway.
Among all this, Porter’s distinctive songs ring out clearly. Under the baton of music director Paul Sportelli, the production’s 13-piece orchestra tackles his jazzy, harmonically evocative tunes with a great deal of zeal. The production reminded me that this really is a genre-defining score — and left me respecting Shaw’s commitment to staging musicals that invent new versions of the word “lovely.”
Bon voyage!
Anything Goes runs at the Shaw Festival until October 4. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Liam Donovan
Liam is Intermission’s senior editor. His writing has appeared in publications like Maisonneuve, This, and NEXT. He loves the original Super Mario game very much.
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