Anything Goes

Westchester Broadway Theater, Elmsford, NY, August 5, 2018

Reviewed by Chip Deffaa for Cabaret Scenes

I’ll take my pleasures where I find them. There’s so much I can  enjoy in Anything Goes, which is being presented through September 9 at the Westchester Broadway dinner theater, that I can overlook (just barely) that weak, weak book. In one form or another, Anything Goes has been charming audiences since the original Broadway production (starring Ethel Merman, William Gaxton, and Victor Moore) opened in 1934.

In the current production, I relished the winning performances of Stacia Fernandez as Reno Sweeney and Jon Peterson as Moonface Martin.
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It’s good to have a couple of solid pros in key roles. I savored such irresistible Cole Porter songs as “You’re the Top,” “Anything Goes,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “All Through the Night,” “Friendship,” “Easy to Love,” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow”—an abundance of riches, Porter at his best. You won’t find a show with a livelier, wittier score. I liked the way ensemble members, directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford, periodically punctuated the proceedings with most-welcome dance. (When the book starts to sag, go into your dance! And Porter wrote some great music to dance to.) I appreciated, too, the costumes of Keith Nielsen. It’s almost worth the price of admission just to see the spectacular silver outfit Reno Sweeney wears in the “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” number. 

The book, alas, has almost no forward momentum—it proceeds by fits and starts, and it doesn’t pull you in very much. I’ve seen a lot of productions of Anything Goes over the years, with different versions of the script; it’s been revised and reworked a couple of times, without great success. The book is always the least impressive part of the production. The original book was written by P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton and Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse, highly respected writers of their day. This production uses the 1987 revision, featuring a book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, and it’s just not very well constructed. The end of Act One feels more like the end of a show than the end of a first act. (I could have gone home happily at the intermission, and most of the best songs are in the first act.) The writers simply haven’t created the kind of tension in the first act that is needed for us to feel we can’t wait to see how things get resolved in the second; that’s really inept writing. Watch any halfway decent old Hollywood musical, and you’ll find a better constructed script, one that pulls you along from start to finish. This script often seems like a series of too obvious song cues, as though the writers were mainly working to find a way to fit in another good song. At times, the libretto made me wince.

But, oh!—those glorious songs! Porter was a genius. The lyrics of the best songs are as sharp and witty as any in the musical theater canon. And, for me, it was a delight hearing them again. I relished hearing songs like “Friendship,” “Anything Goes,” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” executed with flair. I didn’t want “You’re the Top” to end.

Stacia Fernandez, who last appeared at Westchester in Mama Mia (which she also did on Broadway), makes an excellent Reno Sweeney. She attacks the songs with an appropriately 

Mermanesque vigor. I relished the way she dug into the intro of  the show’s title song. I felt, from the first notes, that that classic song was in the right hands. And what can I say about Jon Peterson?
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He’s a star, and he brings a star’s energy and presence to a supporting role. I wish there were more for him to do, but I was glad to see him.

 Judging by the great hand he got at the curtain call, the audience recognized they were seeing someone special. Zach Trimmer was a fine, stalwart Billy. Mychal Phillips, well cast as Erma, made the most of her moments. Kevin Pariseau was a delight as Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. And it’s always good to see Bob Walton, even if he had awfully little to do here. I thought Jackie Raye was miscast as Hope Harcourt; she did not have a pretty enough voice for the good material she had to sing.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot to enjoy here, and the cast of 21 sells the ensemble numbers in style.