Anything Goes
By Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse
Directed by Roy Hamlin
1993
Music, dance, laughs and the age-old tale of boy meets girl… Anything Goes is delightful, delicious and de-lovely.
In a New York City bar in the early 1930s, successful Wall Street banker Elisha Whitney waits impatiently for his assistant, Billy Crocker. Billy drops off some items for Whitney’s upcoming vacation, but forgets Whitney’s passport. Billy agrees to deliver it on the cruise ship the following morning. As Whitney exits, Billy’s old friend Reno Sweeny arrives. A sexy Evangelist turned nightclub singer, Reno plans to travel on the same boat as Whitney. Reno is quite fond of Billy, but Billy is in love with a girl named Hope Harcourt.
The next morning, The SS American is set to sail. The ship’s passengers include: American debutante Hope Harcourt; her wealthy English fiancé Lord Evelyn Oakleigh; Hope’s widowed mother, Evangeline Harcourt; Minister Henry T. Dobson and his two recent converts, a pair of rascally street toughs named Spit and Dippy; Reno Sweeny and her four showgirl Angels; and gangster Moonface Martin, disguised as a minister, with his accomplice Erma. When Billy boards the ship, Whitney tells him to sell all shares of Amalgamated stock. But Billy is distracted when he discovers that Hope is sailing with her fiancé. He inadvertently identifies Minister Dobson as Moonface Martin, so two F.B.I. agents throw the minister in the ship’s brig, leaving Spit and Dippy – who turn out to be skilled pickpockets – to wander the ship without supervision.
Moonface and Erma thank Billy by offering him the unused ticket of their friend, Snake Eyes Johnson, who is wanted by the FBI as Public Enemy #1. Billy, determined to win Hope’s heart, accepts the ticket just as the ship sets off. And that’s just in the first half of the first act…
History
Anything Goes premiered on Broadway on November 21, 1934 at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 420 performances, becoming the fourth longest-running musical of the 1930s. A revised version of the show opened off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre on May 15, 1962, starring Eileen Rodgers as Reno Sweeney and Hal Linden as Billy Crocker. In 1987, Lincoln Center Theater produced an updated version of the show. Opening at Broadway’s Vivian Beaumont Theater on October 19, 1987, the show starred Patti LuPone, Howard McGillin and Bill McCutcheon, won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and played for 784 performances.
In 2011, the Beaumont version was revived at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on Broadway, starring Sutton Foster and Joel Grey. Once again, Anything Goes won the Tony for Best Musical Revival, and the production ran for 521 performances.
Summary courtesy of Concord Theatricals.
