By Myra Chanin . . .
I’ve spent the last I’m-ashamed-to-admit-how-many-days trying to figure out a witty way to convince everyone to rush down to Boca’s Wick Theatre (in Boca Raton, Florida) and immerse themselves in an utterly superlative production of Anything Goes . . . at least once. I’m not alone in delighting in these two-and-a-half hours of pleasure that flew by like minutes. The entire audience, from teens to senioritas, traipsed out after the final standing ovation with smiles on their lips, songs in their hearts and wings on their walkers.
As usual, the unstoppable Marilyn A. Wick greeted the audience and introduced the performance, looking like a billion Yankee greenbacks, not that now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t ponzi crypto. Marilyn, the Executive Managing Producer of Boca Raton’s snazzy, digitally au courant Wick Theatrical multiplex prepared us for the show with historical tidbits.
In 1931, Vinton Freedley was a Broadway bigshot, which wasn’t surprising. He’d produced a score of musicals, seven of them with scores by George and Ira Gershwin. Alas, in 1933 their eighth offering only lasted for 33 performances before assigning itself to a basement in oblivion. Freedley’s subsequent decrease in income required him to flee from his creditors to modest quarters on a fishing boat, sailing the Gulf of Panama where an idea he liked for a musical came to him; it was the story of an ocean liner facing the threat of shipwreck. He returned to New York, paid off his debts and assembled a dream team. Ethel Merman agreed to star in a script written by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton—they’d created Wooster and Jeeves. The score? Cole Porter would supply words and music. Who could ask for anything more?
Unfortunately, as rehearsals began, the S.S. Morro Castle went down off the coast of New Jersey, a highly publicized disaster in which 125 passengers lost their lives. The script needed revision, but Wodehouse and Bolton were unavailable, so director Howard Lindsay and his pal Russel Crouse play-doctored. Dumped the shipwreck and kept the characters. An evangelist turned nightclub singer and her pal who’s in love with a debutante who’s engaged to the elderly English Lord on a ship that needs celebrities to impress its passengers and only has Public Enemy #13 who’d stowed away to slip away from the FBI. Whew!
How did they get to the final curtain? Two words. Anything goes.
Wick is presenting 1987’s re-revision by Timothy Crouse, son of Russel Crouse and John Weidman who provided Sondheim with the libretto for Pacific Overtures. Words are insignificant to those waiting to revel in Cole Porter’s delicious interior rhymes, like these: “You can tell at a glance what a swell night this is for romance. You can hear, dear Mother Nature murmuring low, let yourself go!” Six great Cole Porter hits with memorable melodies and unforgettable rhymes punctuate Act One: “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Easy to Love,” “Friendship,” “It’s De-lovely,” and “Anything Goes.” Three others, equally powerful, are heard in the shorter Act Two when “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” “All Through the Night,” and “The Gypsy in Me” keep your shoulders bopping to the beat.
Marilyn Wick attracts, and holds onto, craftsmen with great talent like Scenic Designer Ardeen Landhuis who gave the ship a subtle but lush Art Deco ambiance and Josieu T. Jean’s and Kirk Bookman’s projections and lighting which completed the class in classic. Travis M. Grant Costume Designer and Wig designer Justin Lore must have run rampant through the Wick costume museum to find the plethora of perfectly glitzy outfits and a collection of wigs that fitted the time period so well.
The casting was flawless and Director Norb Joerder, also a former dancer, was versatile enough to wring every possible smile from the antic movements of the lowlife crooks, including Barry Pearl’s Public Enemy #13, Leah Sessa’s Erma La Tour, Joey Casella’s Henry T. Dobson, Stefano Galeb’s Spit, Georgio Volpe’s Dippy and Troy Stanley, a white-collar Yale elite using insider information to make a killing in the market.
And at the top, Aaron Bower . . . finally starring! She played the stripper with the trumpet in Gypsy, a most impressive Fairy Godmother in Cinderella and now I’m over the moon to see her bow to curtain call after curtain call, like she deserves. As for her co-star Jeremy Benton, the adorable Billy Crocker, I feel his total presence on stage in every scene. He also dances on air like Fred Astaire and has an interesting tenor, Al Jolson-y, with a concealed vibrato that appears whenever he opens his throat wide to sing.
But let’s not kid ourselves. What knocks your socks off from the very first second to the last second are the syncopated tap dancers, who eat, breathe and sleep only to tap. Three cheers for Choreographer, now Wick Theater Resident Dancing Master, Oren Korenblum, dancer, instructor, and founder of the OK Dance Company who created the routines. Spare me the modesty. Your work demands a higher grade than a mere OK.
I won’t take for granted the too-often-taken-for-granted Ensemble Dance Captain, Melanie Farber, who keeps the Wick’s tappers tapping their twinkling toes, limbs and torsos in unbelievable unison. Even the duo who imitated Jimmy Durante tilted their heads at very same angle, waved their arms as Siamese twins might with their fingers the same number of centimeters apart. To me, Melanie Farber is a terpsichorean Aga Khan, worth her weight in platinum. Somebody tell her to eat more in case Marilyn Wick takes my suggestion to heart.
The dancers in the ensemble deserve recognition, so here they are in alphabetical order and Boldface type: Vickie Joleen Anderson, Alexandra Garcia, Corinne Holland, Elie Kupperman, Matt Lowther, Josh McWhortor, Carrie Mo, Diego Pfeiffer, Loren Stone, Larry Toyter and Jake Trammel. Well-deserved bravoes to all.
Anything Goes. Through February 12 at The Wick in Boca Raton, Florida (www.thewick.org). Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2 pm. Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 pm. Contact boxoffice@theWick.org or 561-005-2333 for tickets and information.
Photos: Amy Pasquantonio
