From Thursday, August 16th to Sunday, August 19th, Triple Threat Theatre presents Annie: The Musical at the Academy Theatre for Performing Arts in Lindsay.
Featuring over two dozen young performers and a handful of adult actors, Annie: The Musical is directed by Claire Imrie and assisted by choreographer Alana Collver, musical director Mitch Aldrich, and producer Stephanie Mackey.
Part of their annual theatre intensive program held each summer, Annie is a unique show in that the company professionally brings it to full production in only 10 days of intensive work and performance training.
“We pull the show together in five days and then rehearse it like crazy after that,” says director Claire Imrie. “We started rehearsal on Monday morning. Act one was ready by Wednesday by lunch time. We go nine to five for two weeks. It really gives you a chance to really live it, and immerse yourself into the character and be there for a little while.”
Making her debut in the newspaper comic pages, Annie was created by cartoonist Harold Gray in 1924. Groundbreaking during the time of its debut, Little Orphan Annie was essentially a serialized comic strip written to appeal to children, but was filled with political and social commentary, primarily about class and the gap between the have’s and have not’s. As a result of its subject matter, during the Great Depression Little Orphan Annie was one of the most-read comics in North America.
In 1930 Annie made her debut on radio, attracting approximately six million listeners daily, and she made her film debut in 1932 in a series of short films directed by David O. Selznick and featuring actress Mitizi Green. Annie would be a fixture in newspaper comics until 2010, when her comic was abruptly cancelled on a cliffhanger. In a strange twist, the storyline was eventually finished in 2014 in the Dick Tracy comic strip, where Annie and her supporting cast continue to make regular appearances.
The stage musical version of Annie made its debut on Broadway at the Alvin Theater in 1977. Written by Charles Strouse, Martin Charmin, and Thomas Meehan, the show became an overnight sensation and won seven Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book, catapulting songs like “Tomorrow” and “A Hard Knock Life” into the American songbook. The musical has since been adapted into a motion picture three times; most notably in 1982 featuring Aileen Quinn in the role of Annie, again in 1999, and most recently in 2014.
A character with timeless appeal, each generation seems to embrace their own version of Annie, and the musical has helped keep the character alive and relevant for over 90 years.
Yet despite the popularity of the films, none of the movies have actually followed the originally Broadway musical as written in 1977. They kept the songs and the premise, but have played around with much of the drama. It is the original 1977 version of Annie: The Musical that audiences may not be as familiar with that the Triple Threat Theatre is presenting at the Academy Theatre.
“What’s different about the movie and the musical is the way the show ends and many of the more dramatic moments,” Claire explains. “We also have a little bit of a meaner Missus Hannigan. For me, the meaning of the message of the story is hard work and following the rules can pay off. You have this incredible rags-to-riches story with Annie, and the opposite of that is Missus Hannigan and her brother Rooster who have not followed the rules and are not moral characters, so it doesn’t work out for them.”
The thirteenth year that Triple Threat Theatre has produced shows in their summer intensive program, volunteers and performers count their summers on these shows, popular with an audience that grows every year.
“A lot of the adults in our company are what I would call semi-professional in the sense that this is what they went to post-secondary school for, or they have been doing this for so much of their life,” Claire says. “This is what they do for their two week holidays. A lot of people will take two weeks off from their professional life and come and spend these weeks with us. My family uses the different shows as a point of reference to what we did that year.”
With many of the older performers being connected to the Lindsay Dance Studio, Claire and her colleagues were inundated with hopeful performers when audition notices went out for the group of orphans.
“We had over a hundred kids show up to audition for the orphans and we only had enough room for fifteen,” Claire recalls. “So that was a very hard decision. Choosing fifteen orphans was the hardest decision for us.”
Of course only one young performer can take the lead as the title character, and in the Triple Threat Theatre production the lucky girl to play Annie is Gracie Silveira.
Dressed in Annie’s trademark red and white dress, and peeking under a wig of red curls, Gracie is a bright and articulate young performer with big talent.
“In the beginning I was a little stressed out because I have a lot of lines,” Gracie tells me. “But it’s fun now that I’ve started. I like it.”
Annie: The Musical is Gracie’s fourth production with Triple Threat Theatre, but her first in a lead role. I asked Gracie, who has been dancing since the age of three, what it is about Annie that has made her resonate with audiences for over nine decades.
“Annie is special because she was going through so much stuff, but she was still happy,” Gracie says. “All the other orphans are angry, but Annie is different. She’s happy and cute and sweet. She has a positive energy about her wherever she goes.”
“Annie also has a sense of bravery,” Claire adds. “She has a cheeky, spunky side to her that I think a lot of people can relate to. In a world where she has every reason to be upset, Annie chooses to find hope.”
Unlike his young co-stars, Alex McLeod, who plays opposite Gracie as her mentor Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, didn’t walk onto a stage until he was 31. Working as a litigation lawyer by trade, Alex has taken two weeks away from his practice to take part in the production.
“It’s been incredible,” Alex says. “It’s amazing to see how fast the young people pick things up. The Triple Threat community itself is such a supportive and overwhelming nice community. It’s mind blowing to see how fast things come together.”
“Daddy Warbucks is masculine and strong, and he has fulfilled his business goals but hasn’t fulfilled his emotional goals,” Claire says of Alex’s character. “Annie sort of reminds him the amazingness of New York City. She reminds him how to see it with sweet innocence childlike eyes with that edge of optimism and hopefulness, especially in the depression era they needed that.”
“I’m a dad myself and I love spending time with my children so I think I have an understanding of where the transformation ends,” Alex says of his role. “But at the beginning it is a serious role, and in my nine to five doing litigation I can put that mask on sometimes.”
While visiting the set of Annie, I was struck by the high energy and excitement of the performers, but also by the discipline and the seriousness that even the youngest performers took in creating an excellent finished product.
As the older members of the cast performed the NYC production number, I noticed how each member of the chorus brought their own individual energy to the stage. Each performer had their own identity and stood out from one another. Each one had a role to play, but each one of them could also step up and be a star of their own. This is an extraordinary group of performers engaged in an intense, but rewarding, experience.
“We want to put together a performance that is great community theatre,” Claire says. “I get nervous when I call it community theatre, because what we want to do is to take it to the next level. We can do that because the people we are working with are so talented.”
“The rehearsal part is fun, but the main part is at the end when you can show everyone what you’ve been working on and you hear the applause,” Gracie adds.
I have full confidence that the Triple Threat Theatre’s production of Annie: The Musical, a perennial family favourite, will be a delight. I was greatly impressed but what I saw only after a short time of preparation.
Come out and support young performers and local theatre initiatives in this family-friendly production.
Annie: The Musical will be performed at the historic Academy Theatre in Lindsay at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 16th and Friday, August 17th, and at 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 18th and Sunday, August 19th. Tickets are $28 for adults, $25 for seniors or university and high school students, and $18 for elementary school students and can be purchased from the Academy Theatre box office by phone at 705-324-9111 or online at academytheatre.ca.
