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Ultimate schmaltz meets impeccable polish

Robyn Sassen
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COME, boy: The love for the urchin (Emma-Rose Blacher) and the stray. Photograph by Christiaan Kotze

Children with their dogs in a tale about orphans during the years of the 1930s Depression – one that ends with a resounding happily-ever-after: It’s a flawless recipe for absolute schmaltz overload, for most directors, performers and producers. This version of Annie, however, replete with a significant child cast – in fact, with three alternative child casts – is so well honed, so infinitesimally plotted and so carefully crafted that it really flies: from the set to the cast to the choreography to the behaviour of the dog, it’s a tight ship of a show and gives dignity to the notion of ultimate schmaltz.

When the eponymous little girl (Emma-Rose Blacher) with her characteristic red hair and her impeccably wretched orphan-Annie brown cardigan emerges on stage after the dormitory scene, she will melt your heart and blow your mind at the same time. Exuding a confidence way beyond her 12 years, Blacher presents the real deal in musical theatre’s hope for the future: she can sing, she can act, she can dance and her interface with her peers and adult performers is completely flawless. She lends the complicated character of Annie who has dreams and hopes in a harsh reality, endearing credibility. And this from an overwhelmingly enormous stage, in front of a packed audience.

Indeed, with all eyes and all spotlights on her, it is difficult to drag your eyes into other aspects of the work: It is beautifully directed in such a way that the child central to the tale never fades under the embrace of the story, which reaches from America’s New Deal to an interface with Roosevelt (Mike Huff), a navigation into the poverty of just-post-Depression America where morals and lives were fraying at the seams. Annie remains in the spotlight through incredibly beautiful and authentic costume changes and set shifts which will set your heart aflutter.

With Neels Claasen in the role of Daddy Warbucks (on opening night), and Charon Williams-Ros as the deliciously nasty and utterly morally flawed persona of Miss Hannigan, the work is satisfyingly tight, perfectly clear and as articulate as a comic book in the values it espouses. It’s one of those family shows that will leave you with hope in your heart and encourage you to remember why you need to have dreams for the future, even if everything feels broken and on the cusp of self-destruction

The casualty in your experience of this work, however, may be manifest in two areas: the audience around you and the hard-boiledness of the production. But, you may protest, the more hard-boiled the better? In an age where digital technology is able to remove every speck of dust, uncertainty or scratch in a musical performance, you yearn for the soft-edged nuances you get from listening to vinyl.

Effectively, Annie, which is crafted as a franchise production to tour the world and features the enormous creative input of performers, has a kind of colour-by-number status. But don’t get me wrong: this is not an easy thing to emulate, from its plotting to its choreography, the training of local performers to the ultimate success of the work – consider pieces such as Dreamgirls, Chicago, Hairspray and others of that ilk that have graced South African stages in the last few years. Rather, the effects of this beautiful show are designed so that they may be exactly replicated, whether the work is being staged in Johannesburg or Honolulu. And this is where the hard-boiledness comes in: the work is so tight, so hard-edged in its values that it may feel ever so slightly too slick for comfort.

But your comfort zones might be upset for another reason too: It’s an odd reality that when the average theatre goer hears that a work is about children, or features children, they round up their tousle-headed sproglets, wipe their noses, change their nappies and whip them off to a fully fledged three hour long theatre production with loud booming noises, a complex political story, flashing lights and expensive tickets. And what happens? The sproglet in question howls its head off and is severely traumatised by the event. To say nothing of what it does for the audience with the misfortune to be seated within earshot of them. The theatre simply cannot be held responsible when an audience member flagrantly ignores the “no under 3” proscription on the booking pack: no one wants a fight with an unhappy patron minutes before the curtain rises. Or should they? Either way, this ain’t a show for the littlies, but it’s as good as it gets in terms of a life-shaking experience for the bigger children in the audience as it graciously skates through 1930s aesthetics, values and ethos.

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