Theatre in Review: Anything Goes (Roundabout Theatre Company/Stephen Sondheim Theatre)

	Sutton Foster and company. Photo: Joan Marcus

There are exactly two moments in Anything Goes when pure, untrammeled musical comedy exuberance takes over, shaking the Stephen Sondheim Theater to its foundations -- and both of them are led by Sutton Foster. The first happens at the end of Act I, when, after 90 minutes of scheming and deception on an ocean liner where the celebrity-hungry passengers, tossing conventional morality on its ear, are busy fawning on a fellow traveler whom, they believe, is a ruthless gangster. (Actually, he's a fake, but never mind.) Suddenly, Foster appears on the second level of Derek McLane's tri-level set, offering brassy commentary on a world turned upside down in the glorious title tune. The number sizzles not just because of her trumpet-like voice and impeccable diction; she also leads the dance break, which builds and builds until the stage is filled with sailors, sinners, and socialites, tapping away with total abandon. And, as if to confirm our suspicion that she is superhuman, she has energy left to bring home the song's finale. Someone should tell the White House about Foster -- she may be the alternative energy source we've been looking for all along.

Kathleen Marshall, the production's director and choreographer, immediately tops herself at the beginning of Act II, when Foster, as the soul-saving jazz singer Reno Sweeney, takes over the ship's nightclub for a red-hot revival meeting. Stripping down to a skimpy outfit designed to look like hellfire licking at her hips, Sutton/Sweeney rounds up a full house of skeptics, bringing them to their feet for an arm-waving, hand-clapping, and foot-stomping frenzy in "Blow, Gabriel, Blow." We're loaded with musicals at the moment, but, even so, we're a little starved for the kind of full-out, roof-raising dance madness that is a hallmark of the Broadway musical; nobody stages them better than Marshall, and, with Foster in charge, her head tilted up toward the balcony and a sly, sunny smile creeping across her face as if to acknowledge that she's right where she belongs, Anything Goes delivers the purest, most basic kind of thrill musical comedy can offer.

On the other hand, the show raises a question few of us ever thought to ask: Sutton Foster is an electrifying singer and a lively dancer -- but is she a broad? After all, she's stepping into a role whose provenance includes the likes of Ethel Merman, Ginger Rogers, and Patti LuPone, playing the kind of dame who's been around the block more than a few times and has the mileage on her odometer to prove it. Foster, that pro of pros, gives it everything she's got, stalking the stage in peroxide curls, leaning back and flashing a bit of thigh when the occasion calls for it, and cracking wise in a heavily shellacked New York accent, but, for all the effort, she's play-acting. Her rendition of "I Get a Kick Out of You" lacks the necessary feeling of regret, and whether she's berating a suitor for treating her with too much respect or she's trying to pass herself off as a wronged Chinese maiden, she's really not all that funny. She has her moments -- including an amusing deadpan duet of "Friendship" with Joel Grey as an on-the -am gangster -- but, for all the effort, the lady is not a tramp, and the portrait simply doesn't stick.

If this was the only problem afflicting Anything Goes, it might still make for a fine, funny, toe-tapping entertainment. But, those show-stoppers aside, Marshall's production spends much of its time sailing in surprisingly becalmed waters. As Reno's ex-suitor and the debutante that he loves (and stows away for), Colin Donnell and Laura Osnes make for a colorless pair of ingénues, delivering such Cole Porter evergreens as "Easy to Love," "It's De-Lovely," and "All Through the Night" competently but with little flair. As Moonface Martin, the mobster who is ashamed of his status as Public Enemy #13, Grey relies too heavily on his trademark pixie mannerisms in a performance that is more bizarre than funny. As his moll, Erma, Jessica Stone delivers her wisecracks with flair, but she turns her big number, "Buddy Beware" - a charm song best handled with the lightest of touches - into a strident bid for a showstopper. Adam Godley is far too cartoonish as the British lord who develops a yen for Reno; when he reveals his passion for her in "The Gypsy in Me," you have to wonder what Reno would see in such a silly ass. At one point, a snooty lady cruiser complains that the ship's passenger list lacks sparkle, and I couldn't agree more.

Memory is a funny thing; it can affect one's experience of a show for good or for ill. One reason I enjoyed the current revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is that it is so superior to the unfortunate 1995 staging. In the case of Anything Goes, however, I couldn't get past the memory of Jerry Zaks' 1987 production at Lincoln Center Theatre. Working with Timothy Crouse and John Weidman's revised book and a funny, sexy, and golden-voiced cast, Zaks turned Anything Goes into the kind of screwball comedy that Paramount Pictures produced with such gleeful regularity in Depression years. It also seemed weirdly up-to-date; opening on the night that the stock market fell 500 points, the show -- with its lineup of showbiz evangelists, celebrity criminals, bankrupt stockbrokers, and heiresses for sale on the marriage market -- seemed to prove that the more things change the more they stay the same. But what seemed so cohesive in Zaks' hands comes across, under Marshall's direction, as a loose collection of vaudeville gags designed to pass the time between musical numbers.

There's plenty more to like over at the Stephen Sondheim. Bill Elliott's new orchestrations have such swingy vitality that you expect a party to break out at any moment, McLane's designs --including a heavenly show curtain -- suggest a '30s travel poster come to life; they are polished to a fare-thee-well by Peter Kaczoroswski's tastefully colorful lighting. (His sunset effects are particularly fetching.) Martin Pakeldinaz's costumes are the ne plus ultra of '30s swank; between this production and last season's revival of Lend Me a Tenor, it's safe to say that he is the go-to designer for this period. Brian Ronan's sound design has a pleasing intimacy, and he does well by the handful of required effects, including the ship's horn and the offstage rattle of machine gun fire during a skeet shooting match.

There are also amusing contributions from John McMartin as a soused, myopic stockbroker with an excessive devotion to his alma mater -- recalling the death of a colleague following the 1929 crash, he says, fondly, "He jumped like a Yale man"-- and Jessica Walter as a grasping society matron. I particularly enjoyed her panicked entrance on deck, outfitted with a life vest and every jewel she owns.

In the end however, if this mildly entertaining production sometimes explodes with fun, only occasionally is it easy to love. In the words of Porter, it was just one of those things.--David Barbour