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undated Review by Jeniva Berger |
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| Speaking of costumes, there isn't one that isn't glamorous - Patrick Clark doing the design honors here - worn by the versatile Cynthia Dale as the well seasoned tough cookie Reno Sweeney in the Festival's other musical, Anything Goes. You might say that this is the prime of Cynthia Dale as the Festivals' leading lady of song and dance. Dale hasn't been off the mainstage much in the Festival musicals during the last several seasons, an exception last year with The King and I, Lucy Peacock turning in a memorable performance as Anna Leowens. Anyone who likes the kind of exuberant tap dance numbers that MGM musicals used to feature will have a ball watching Anything Goes, its dazzling musical numbers done to a turn by Director/Choreographer Anne Allan. Allan keeps the action pretty solid in this typical 1930's show about a gangster masquerading as a reverend and a young stock broker pretending he's a gangster in order to follow his socialite girl friend on an Atlantic cruise crossing. Anything Goes is about love, money and class, who has it, who doesn't, and who wants it, and leading the pack is an Aimee Semple McPherson kind of Broadway entertainer named Reno Sweeney who travels with her own group of chorines she calls angels. Reno is not only what used to be called a real swell broad – after all she gives up the stock broker out of true love because she wants him to be happy with the socialite - but she walks away with the best numbers in the show, all Cole Porter gems including You're the Top, I Get a Kick Out of You, Blow, Gabriel Blow and the title song. Cynthia Dale belts them out with the gusto of the show's original Reno Sweeney, Ethel Merman, but Dale's voice minus Merman's hard vowels is a lot easier on the ears. No more need be said about Anything Goes' script by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, revised by Howard Lindsey and Russel Crouse. It won't be singled out for burial in a time capsule. Point of fact it's pretty silly, but it's proven itself durable having been popular since its debut in 1934. On the plus side, you don't have to think, just sit back and enjoy, and there are a lot of people to help you do it. Michael Gruber and Elizabeth de Grazia are a perfect romantic duo, Gruber as the stock broker Billy Crocker chasing after his wealthy socialite Ginger Rogers look alike sweetheart, Hope Harcourt. Together they're great in the loveliest number in the show All Through the Night, one that not only shows off Patrick Clark's very sleek cruise ship setting but the gossamer dancing style of Rogers and Astaire. You can almost smell the salt air. Douglas Chamberlain does a neat turn around from Guys and Dolls avuncular mission reverend as the bumbling, near sighted, but very wealthy Elisha Whitney in Anything Goes, while Patricia Collins is Hope's classy money-minded mom Evangeline Harcourt, and Laird Macintosh is as much over the top as Hope's reluctant stuffed shirt English fiancé, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. As second bananas, Jimmy Spadola hams it up more than Virginia's best smoked as the real gangster in hiding, Moonface Martin, and Sheila McCarthy takes a break from Guys and Dolls where she is Miss Adelaide to play a Miss Adelaide clone, Moonface's moll, Emma. What makes Anything Goes an all-time favorite musical of its genre are the great Cole Porter songs which more than make up for the pencil slim plot which was a great depression chaser back in 1934. If Anything Goes can chase away some of the 21st Century blues, more power to it. Anything Goes plays in repertoire at the Avon Theatre until Oct. 31.
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