Anything Goes
Olivier Theatre Winter-Spring 2003; Drury Lane Theatre Autumn 2003 - Summer 2004

Our original National Theatre Review (Scroll down for the Drury Lane re-visit):

The National Theatre's past forays into Broadway musicals have fallen into an interesting pattern. When they tackle acknowledged classics of the genre, they can be absolutely brilliant - think of their Guys and Dolls, Carousel and My Fair Lady - but when they dip into the second tier - Lady in the Dark, A Little Night Music - the results can be deadly.

So how would they do with Cole Porter's Anything Goes, one of the better musicals of the 1930s, but no Oklahoma? The answer, as it turns out, is somewhere in between. Trevor Nunn's production has a lot of things lacking about it, and takes a long time to warm up, but it eventually finds its feet and offers a happy - if not quite wonderful - experience.

Originally written as a vehicle for Ethel Merman, the show was completely rewritten by a couple of other guys for a 1987 revival, with a few extra Porter songs shoehorned in, and it is that version the NT is doing. It's set on an ocean liner, with the plot built around a boy stowing away to stop the girl he loves from marrying someone else, and in the process being mistaken for a gangster and hailed as a celebrity.

The real star roles, though, are a night club singer and a gangster who help get the lovers together, while the score includes such first-level Porter gems as I Get a Kick Out Of You, You¹re the Top, Friendship and the title song. And the first shortfall you notice in this production is the lack of star power. In the Merman role Sally Ann Triplett has some vulgar energy, but she never really seizes the stage, and for the first half seems to be merely slavishly following direction, down to the smallest mechanical gesture. Martin Marquez proves himself a drily understated comedian as the gangster, stealing scenes with effortless ease, but the nicest thing to say about John Barrowman as the boy is that he is considerably less wooden than romantic leads tend to be.

John Gunter's shipboard set is a clumsy one, making the enormous Olivier stage seem cramped, and at least in the first act Stephen Mear's choreography repeatedly falls short. There are a couple of Fred-and-Ginger dances for the lovers that peter out just when they should be starting, while the first act finale, to the title song, almost wastes the virtually guaranteed excitement of a stage full of tap dancers. The number eventually comes alive, but you can't help thinking that Gower Champion would have had it at full steam from the start and built from there.

Things get very, very much better in Act II, though, as a string of one show-stopper after another energises both cast and audience. With Blow Gabriel Blow Sally Ann Triplett finally shows us what she's got as a belter and mover, and Mear's choreography breaks loose to real excitement, including a witty tip of the hat to Bob Fosse in the middle of the number. Then Simon Day, as the girl¹s stuffy British fiance, cuts loose with Triplett in the hilarious Gypsy In Me, followed almost immediately by Annette McLaughlin, as the gangster's moll, dancing up a storm with some sailors to Buddy Beware.

In short, the show eventually reaches the level of high energy and great fun it should have had from the start, and on that basis it can be recommended - as long as you have the patience to sit through the first half while it's warming up.

Gerald Berkowitz

November 2003: The National Theatre's high-energy production transfers to the West End more-or-less intact, and looks likely to settle in and entertain audiences for a while.

This is almost the archetype of the kind of big, brassy Broadway musical they don't make any more, and if I have some reservations about its not being quite big and brassy enough, I am clearly in a minority. As my original review above shows, I felt and still feel that it takes a little too long for star Sally Ann Triplett to find her feet and for the production to find just how loud and (in the best sense of the word ) vulgar it wants to be.

I can see now that this is clearly a directorial decision, Trevor Nunn opting to guide us into the play's world slowly, and willing to pay the price of having to catch up later. So, for example, when Triplett and John Barrowman as the romantic lead mug their way through You're The Top early in the first act, the effect is cute and totally entertaining. The fact that Triplett's character isn't meant to be cute may not matter, except that it takes the actress a couple more numbers to get us up to the larger-than-life level she plays the rest of the show in.

Not even I am old enough to have seen Ethel Merman in the original production, but I have heard recordings, and while Triplett eventually gets close to that level of brassiness, I can't help wishing she hit us with it from the start. (On the simplest level, she is in constant danger of being drowned out by the orchestra, instead of blasting her way through as Merman would have without a microphone.)

Elsewhere, I'm more impressed by Barrowman than I was last year, appreciating how he fills out the somewhat thankless role of the romantic lead, and I sorely miss the late Denis Quilley in the comic supporting role of the tipsy millionaire, his replacement all but invisible in his scenes. John Gunter's set seems less awkward on the enormous Drury Lane stage, Martin Marquez and Simon Day continue to steal their scenes with fine comic performances, and when everyone around me is having a wonderful time, who am I to complain that it might have been even better?

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - Anything Goes - National / Drury Lane 2003