Throughout Beef & Boards’ production of “Annie,” playing now through July 15, I watched 12-year-old Claire Kauffman on stage in the title role. Indeed, her command of the stage won’t allow you to take your eyes off her. I had to keep repeating to myself, “A fifth-grader. She’s in the fifth grade.”
With a voice beyond her years and acting chops to boot, she more than fits the bill as America’s favorite red-headed orphan. Admittedly, she is not new to the role — having just finished playing the same part at Zionsville Middle School — but she is more than deserving of her presence on the Beef & Boards stage.
“Annie” tells the story of a depression-era orphan and her quest to find her real parents, who left her at an orphanage 10 years earlier. Being in the right place at the right time earns Annie a Christmas visit to the home of millionaire Oliver Warbucks (Ty Stover). Warbucks is a busy and important man with no time for children, especially girl children — until Annie.
Packed with hummable musical numbers, the bucket-brigade number “Hard-Knock Life,” sung by the orphans of the Municipal Girls Orphanage, features girls who can sing and dance their way through nasty chores. Awakened in a fit of temper at midnight by Miss Hannigan (Kelly Teal Goyette), the girls are instructed to clean the orphanage until “this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building.” With a flurry of clanging pails, swishing mops and flailing cleaning rags, the girls do not disappoint.
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Kelly Teal Goyette bursts onto the stage as the garishly-attired Miss Hannigan like some kind of manic Miss Frizzle — minus the Magic School Bus. Her young charges are equally afraid of her and hateful, and skillfully manage to hide Annie’s sneaky exit — hidden in a clothes bin and carried out by Bundles who picks up the laundry each week. Goyette can sing, but her overly-frenetic performance was a bit jarring.
An old theatre adage cautions adult actors to never work with kids and animals: they’ll upstage you every time. But what about a kid AND an animal on stage together? Alone on stage, Kauffman sings the most memorable song from the show, the uplifting “Tomorrow” to Sandy, played by a large lovable Labradoodle. Sandy is mostly attentive, but won some audience chuckles and “aws” with his plaintive looks out into the crowd.
Typically, Beef & Boards pulls out all the stops and cuts no corners for any given production. The scenes at the orphanage and the Warbucks mansion are fine, but the pull-down cityscape backdrop — angled as if it were a photo taken from the window of a 10th floor Manhattan penthouse — for “Hooverville” and “NYC” seemed a poor choice.
“Annie” is both a delightful musical and a great history lesson for young audience members, instructing children (and adults) about the human condition during the Great Depression and how our country’s leader, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (James Anthony), shepherded the nation through that crisis.
It’s also a lesson in what life was like before the current forms of entertainment. Miss Hannigan and the orphans each listen to the radio for escape and enjoyment. The scene where Annie and Daddy Warbucks visit the radio station is a window into radio programming.
A review of “Annie” wouldn’t be complete without mention of Jeff Stockberger, who is as great a physical comedian as has ever graced the Beef & Boards stage. Naturally, he plays Rooster — in purple shoes. Alongside Goyette as Hannigan and Deb Wims as his girlfriend, Lily St. Regis, “Easy Street” is easily the most entertaining number in the show. Its energetic choreography is a show-stopper.
However heartwarming, “Annie” leaves us with a question. What happened to Sandy? Shortly after the heartfelt “Tomorrow,” a policeman plucks Annie from Hooverville, where she’s found refuge, and takes her back to the orphanage. It seems like the plucky, courageous, in-your-face Annie wouldn’t allow Sandy to return to the streets only to end up in the dog pound.
Nevertheless, the message of hope in songs like “Maybe” and “Tomorrow” along the optimistic expectations of “NYC” are uplifting and much-needed in today’s society. “Annie” at Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre will leave you smiling.
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“Annie”
Beef * Board Dinner Theatre — 9301 Michigan Road, Indianapolis
Through July 15
Call 317-872-9664 for ticket reservations — $10 discounts off tickets for all children ages 3-15.
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