June 13, 2003

I guess next "CATS" will have a song about feline leukemia

There's a new stark, gritty, and more "natural" version of the 1970s Broadway smash "ANNIE" and no, I'm not making it up.

A "populist theater" (populist is from the Latin for "poor but proud hardworkin' good country folks") in Providence, RI, is staging a revised production that begins with homeless people moving lethargically to a suicidally down tempo "Tomorrow" and ends with Annie waking up back in the orphanage to discover "that her happy life with Daddy Warbucks was only a dream, and that she would never escape poverty, loneliness and despair". The show's creators aren't happy, but that's because they have less vision than Ray Charles taking a nap in a sensory deprivation tank.

I think they shouldn't stop there. I think they should give the play over to Sam Mendes, the man who completely revamped CABARET in such a way as to send Liza Minelli and Joel Grey hurtling from the cliffs of collective memes and into the dustbins of anonymity and shameful memory (where they still landed 83 levels higher than Joel's facially modified daughter Jennifer). Keep the 1930s worldwide Depression thing, but move Annie out of that orphanage and over the seas to Europe under the Nazi juggernaut. I'm talking about Broadway's Next Great Hit,

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE FRANK

I can see it now. A poor Jewish orphan in an attic (yes, I know Anne Frank wasn't an orphan, but this is more musical) who's taken away to the Berlin palace of billionaire speculator Daddi Kriegmarks (John Stamos) and his preoperative transsexual common-law-secretary* Grace von Fahrenkopf (Neil Patrick Harris) who need good PR in order to win Luftwaffe contracts but ends up teaching them about life. In the show's climax she's flown by Göring down to Berchtesgaden where she sings "TOMORROW (Belongs to Me)" with Adolf and Eva, who suddenly realize that there's more to life than global domination and they stop the war and open the Passion8 Bett und Frühstück in Oberammergau. Unfortunately at the end she learns it's just a dream, she's still in her attic, and Daddi Kriegmarks is still unable to shed his Full House curse.

Or you can revamp ANNIE WARBUCKS (the ill fated sequel to ANNIE) as a paean to drug use and teen pregnancy while featuring Sally Struthers as a singing bag lady with a bit to say about global warming.

Or on second thought leave it as it is. People who want gritty reality when they go to the theater can go see bleedin' EQUUS.

*Plagiarism from "THE PRODUCERS" acknowledged

Thanks to Max for the link.