REVIEW | Anything Goes

Nothing goes wrong in staging of 'Anything Goes'

Larry Collins
Springfield News-Leader

've enjoyed many productions of "Anything Goes" over the years, but Tent Theatre's sparkling new staging of Cole Porter's 1934 classic is the most flat-out entertaining of the bunch. It's fleet, funny and perfectly cast from top to bottom. The music is well-served, the dancing adroit, the acting top-notch and the riotous stage business devised by director Carol J. Maples fills the spaces between the marvelous songs with nonstop delight, as if the Marx Brothers were invading a Rogers and Astaire musical.

Kick-starting the hit parade is the effervescent "I Get a Kick Out of You," sung and danced with sensuous verve by Natalie Hiatt as Reno Sweeney, the sexiest evangelist this side of the Atlantic. On a ship embarking for England she bumps into her old buddy Billy Crocker (Justin Roller). After trading "words poetic" with him in the witty "You're the Top," she agrees to help him win the hand of his true love, Hope Harcourt (Stephanie Elzea), who is engaged to the wealthy but hopelessly square Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Seth Hunt).

Read On...