The difficulty with star castingapex gaming88, for a potential theatergoer, is that you never know if it’s merely a gimmick — a famous face who’s been hired to goose a play’s box office, but might not deliver much onstage. And when the celebrity is swooping into an existing production, taking over a role for just a stretch, there is also the question of chemistry. Will the well-known actor blend with the show?
Glad tidings, then, from the holiday run of “Annie” at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where Whoopi Goldberg is giving a rib-ticklingly funny, extremely smart performance as the tipsy, terrorizing Miss Hannigan, bane of all the orphans in her care. If Goldberg the TV talk-show presence has eclipsed in your mind Goldberg the savvy comic actor, her Miss Hannigan will jog your memory.
There is, for example, the weary, what-can-I-tell-you wave of her hand as she utters the oblivious line “Why any kid would want to be an orphan, I’ll never know.” And there is the gross-out one-upmanship of her snatching a dead mouse from a moppet who’s trying to scare her with it, popping the rodent’s head into her mouth and pretending to chomp down.
Not to be underestimated, there is also the affection the audience has for Goldberg. On Friday night, as Miss Hannigan settled into her comfy green armchair, legs splayed and liquor bottle at the ready, I heard a woman across the aisle say in an exhale of fondness: “Oh, Whoopi.” Well, exactly. Even as one of the great child-loathing villains of musical comedy, Goldberg has our sympathy.
She has quite a good show around her, too. Directed by Jenn Thompson, who played the orphan Pepper in the original 1977 Broadway production, this touring version of Thomas Meehan, Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse’s classic steers well clear of cloying. It’s a thoughtful interpretation, making emotional sense of a comic-strip tale, with a remarkably fine Annie in Hazel Vogel.
The story is set in Depression-era New York, in December 1933, when the divide between the haves and have-nots is stark. Annie, a tough and tender 11-year-old longing for the parents who surrendered her when she was an infant, is plucked from her orphanage to spend Christmastime at the opulent home of Oliver Warbucks (Christopher Swan), a Fifth Avenue billionaire. (Set design is by the reliably clever Wilson Chin.)
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The plaintiffs — who include Wendy Davis, a former Democratic state senator, along with a Biden campaign staff member and the bus driver — also testified, saying that the rolling road protest had been frightening and intimidating.
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