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music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, book by Thomas Meehan, directed by Donna Feore

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

May 27-November 2, 2025

Annie: “I love ya tomorrow / You’re always a day away”

The Stratford Festival is currently presenting its first-ever production of the 1976 musical Annie. It is a lavish, all-stops-out production of a musical that, like the comic strip it is based on, has always had a self-satisfied conservative agenda. The Festival couldn’t have predicted the result of the 2024 presidential election in the US and its consequences, but a musical celebrating a billionaire who can tell the president and the FBI what to do has more than a few cringeworthy moments. The cast do their best to round out their cartoon-based characters and help us ignore the show’s underlying political slant. There is great singing and dancing to enjoy, but if you want to take in a musical for pure escape, this is not the one to choose.

Most people will know that the show has something to do with a little girl and her dog and an extremely wealthy man. The source for the musical is the comic strip Little Orphan Annie that ran from 1924-2010. The strip was notorious in its own time for its conservative bias and its stance against labour unions, communism and child labour laws.

The wealthy man celebrated in the musical is the billionaire Daddy Warbucks, whose last name points to the fact that he made his money as a war profiteer in World War I. He’s a Republican who is so rich he can determine policy in Washington and feels free to bring an 11-year-old to sit in on a cabinet meeting . This might have seemed like fantasy in 1976, but we now know more about the undue political influence of billionaires, and it is not comic.

Warbucks is an orphan, too, and is proud that he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps out of poverty to become rich. As a token gesture, this year Warbucks invites an orphan to spend two weeks at Christmas with him before sending the kid back to the orphanage. That’s as far as his philanthropy extends. In the musical Warbucks’s secretary Grace chooses a female orphan and though Warbucks is not initially happy about the idea he warms to it rapidly because Annie is such an optimist. Eventually, before an insidious plot arrives in Act 2, Warbucks plans to adopt Annie.

In the musical, it is Annie who gives FDR the idea for the New Deal. In the comic strip Warbucks opposed the New Deal. In fact, in the strip in 1944 when Warbucks hears that FDR has been re-elected, he falls down dead. Warbucks’s opposition is softened in the musical. There he gives a reason for supporting it: “'The  business of this country is business’ Yes! And for the good of you, the country, Wall Street and me [emphasis in text], we’ve got to get my factories open and the workers back to work". Unsurprisingly, Warbucks’s rationale is self-interest.

We meet Annie herself in 1933 when she is in a city orphanage run by the tyrannical Miss Hannigan. Annie was abandoned as a baby 11 years ago by her parents who left a note saying they would return for her. In the musical she escapes from the orphanage to begin to search for them herself. As she wanders about New York City she rescues a dog she names Sandy, from the dogcatcher by claiming it is her own. She is caught when the police clear out a shantytown and returned to the orphanage. Luckily, however, Gace happen to drop by looking for Warbucks’s token Christmas orphan and chooses Annie. The obvious contradiction in the musical’s background is that it espouses hard work as the way out of poverty while simultaneously showing that Annie is pulled out of poverty just by chance.

In another contradiction, Annie is held up as an example of how hope can help a person through adversity, except that Annie’s hope of finding her parents proves to be in vain. Strangely, after Annie loses Sandy in the police raid, she never thinks of him again and the dog seems to be forgotten by the musical’s creators until they manufacture a would-be sentimental reunion at the end.

Annie’s prime enemy is the despotic Miss Hannigan, who makes money on the side by forcing the all-female orphans to sew garments in a sweat shop. Miss Hannigan’s vanity and haughtiness are sources of comedy. What grates is the creators’ notion that her alcoholism is also funny. Director Donna Feore even has a scene where she has the girls’ chorus imitate Hannigan downing a bottle and then wobbling about the stage. The question is whether Hannigan’s alcoholism is actually funny or pathetic. If Hannigan was a drug addict, would that be funny?

The uncomfortable answer is that Hannigan’s alcoholism is only funny if you think the losers in life are funny. Miss Hannigan’s brother Rooster, just out of prison is also a loser and so is his girlfriend Lily, but they are more dangerous than Miss Hannigan since murder is not off their agenda. The irony is that while Annie is lauded for her unwavering optimism, Rooster is ridiculed for his.

Annie is a musical that fetishizes extravagant wealth at a time when masses of people are homeless and starving. If you can somehow set that nasty aspect of the story aside, the Festival has made the musical into a lively spectacle. As usual Feore’s choreography is varied and energetic, the main flaw being that the action is sometimes too busy. Her best number is the dance she gives the nine orphans (including Annie) to “Hard Knock Life”. Two of the orphans are acrobats and the inclusion of cartwheels and tumbling into an already intricate number is so exhilarating it drew the audience to a mid-show standing ovation.

It's no surprise that a musical based on a comic strip should feature only two-dimensional characters. Under Feore the cast does what it can to round them out. Harper Rae Asch has a remarkable strong voice as Annie and a winning personality. She has no trouble putting across the numbers but perhaps her finest moment is her singing of “Maybe”, where Feore has Asch emphasize Annie’s wistfulness to contrast with the rather relentless spunkiness she is otherwise saddled with. There’s nothing you can do about Annie’s big song “Tomorrow”, one the most annoying musical theatre songs ever written. Not only are the lyrics inane but the song is reprised so many times it becomes grating long before the show is over.

Laura Condlln is hilarious as Miss Hannigan, not because of her imitation of a souse on wobbly pins, but because of the frequent moments when Condlln has Hannigan rapidly switch between fury at an orphan and attempted seduction or graciousness for a visitor. Condlln is able to make Hannigan the only multilayered character in the show. She makes it clear that Hannigan treats the orphans so poorly because of the unhappiness of her own life. Condlln does not take this so far as to destroy the comedy but it does give her character a depth the others do not have. Given how well Condlln can deliver a song, it’s a pity the musical gives her only one solo, “Little Girls”, and that one not a very clever piece.

Dan Chameroy is a suave Daddy Warbucks, thankfully not the usual bald-headed domestic dictator. Sure, Warbucks is initially crotchety that Annie is not a boy, but it only takes a few moments before Annie begins to melt his heart. The whole set-up is predictable and corny but Chameroy makes it work as well as he can. Chameroy is, of course, a great music theatre performer, and in Warbucks’s big song “NYC” praising New York City, Chameroy brings out all the pizzazz the sing needs. In “I Don’t Need Anything But You”, Chameroy softens his tone to bring as much emotion to the mundane lyrics as he can to show us that Warbucks despite all his bravado has a more sensitive side.

Mark Uhre and Amanda Lundgren makes a great pair as the grifters Rooster Hannigan and Lily St. Regis. Uhre has Rooster boil over with energy and Lundgren has Lily exude tacky sensuality. The pair puts across the jazzy tune “Easy Street” with fine singing while conjuring up an aura of danger. When dancing the two seem able to turn their legs to jelly.

As Warbucks’s personal secretary Grace Farrell, Jennifer Rider-Shaw is the exact opposite to Miss Hannigan and her associates. She’s prim and virtuous but is immoveable in getting what she wants. Rider-Shaw sports a lovely operetta-like soprano and fortunately is given many chances to showcase it. Rider-Shaw and Chameroy have such chemistry on stage that we think a romance will develop between Warbucks and Grace, but the creators want to keep the focus on the Warbucks-Annie relationship. They save the Warbucks-Grace relationship for an unsuccessful Annie sequel called Annie Warbucks (1993).

Some people may think it fun, but I find the show’s singing President Roosevelt a step too far. If the show were meant to be a satire, it would be fine; but the show is not a satire. It’s a cartoon fantasy that trivializes FDR by making him a cartoon and the New Deal into a comic punchline. In any case, Stephen Patterson does well in the role and does not try to imitate Roosevelt’s distinctive accent. Patterson is also a fine singer so at least if we must have a singing president, we have one who is pleasant to hear.

It is a bit disturbing that a musical as aesthetically empty and as morally dubious as Annie should be so popular. I assume people are more able than I am to compartmentalize their feelings and simply enjoy the show’s singing and dancing while shutting out the show’s rabidly right-wing pro-capitalist slant. Stratford’s Annie does have a wealth of great singing and dancing, especially from the incredibly talented young girls who play the orphans. But at a time when the US so dominates the news with its rabidly right-wing pro-capitalist actions, the last thing I want in an entertainment is a show that promotes the same world view.

Christopher Hoile

Photo: The chorus of orphans; Harper Rae Asch as Annie with Uno as Sandy, © 2025 David Hou. Laura Condlln as Miss Hannigan, © 2025 Ann Baggley. Jennifer Rider-Shaw as Grace Farrell, Harper Rae Asch as Annie and Dan Chameroy as Daddy Warbucks, © 2025 David Hou.

For tickets visit: www.stratfordfestival.ca