Annie : The 30th Anniversary Cast Recordings

The 30th anniversary of the opening of the 1977 Broadway musical Annie is celebrated -- one year late -- by the release of this cast album, drawing on the talents of the performers of the 30th anniversary tour of the show (which actually hit the road two years early, in 2005). The recording is billed as the "World Premiere Complete Recording," not only because this version of the score takes up the 64 minutes of the first CD, but also because there is a second CD containing bonus material. Producer Robert Sher traveled to Slovakia to record the instrumental tracks with the Istropolis Philharmonic Orchestra (which presumably costs less than using musicians who are union members in the U.S.). This means that the orchestrations are considerably larger than those heard in a typical Broadway pit orchestra. The cast, led by Marissa O'Donnell as Annie, Alene Robertson as the villainous Miss Hannigan, and Conrad John Schuck (who also appeared in the 1997 Broadway revival) as Daddy Warbucks, is strong, and this is overall a winning performance of the music. The second disc will interest music theater fans, especially that particular subgenre fascinated by spectacular flops. It represents the creators' (especially lyricist Martin Charnin) attempt to re-present the Annie sequel, Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge, a show that closed out of town without ever reaching Broadway, and was never recorded. (A revised version, Annie Warbucks, had an off-Broadway run and was recorded.) The material is a strange combination of in-character narrative, provided by Carol Burnett (who played Miss Hannigan in the 1982 movie version), songs from the lost show, and explanations and justifications by Charnin. It's actually not hard to hear why Annie 2 failed: the tone is too mean (Daddy Warbucks, for instance, is relatively unsympathetic), and the songs are inconsistent. Why, for instance, is the big production number "Coney Island" played in ragtime style, when the show is set in 1934? Charnin, like other creators pondering their failures, seems to think that some minor tweak could have changed everything, and he pointedly introduces three different sets of lyrics to the same tune of a song heard late in the show, each with a different focus, as if that would have made Annie 2 a hit. It wouldn't have, but flop fans will enjoy hearing the variations. ~ William Ruhlmann