Opening Night of Annie in Boston

With Eva at Annie in Boston
Photo-A-Day #4411

We received a family four-pack of tickets for free to see Annie on Opening night in Boston at the Wang Theater. Opinions are our own.

Going into Boston to see a show is always a special event with the family. We don’t do it that often but when we do we make an evening out of it. We headed up right after school and luckily the traffic wasn’t terrible. We got to Chinatown in plenty of time so we went over to Genki Ya for dinner. Eva loves this place because she can order sushi. We usually get Andrew a fried breast of chicken because he isn’t a fan of sushi but that changed on this trip. Andrew had his first sushi (Crazy Roll) and didn’t like it and then gobbled up his second sushi (tempura shrimp roll) and loved it!

After dinner we walked over to the theater and met up with my friend Joselin Mane. He is the man behind Boston TweetUp and has been a friend since the first MegaTweetUp back in 2009. He’s a social media star who attends 2 or 3 events daily. If you want to know where to go in Boston, he’s your guy!

We received excellent seats for the play and both kids settled right in to enjoy it. Eva, who has been doing a weekly theater program and has been in theater since she was five, was super excited for the play. She thoroughly enjoyed seeing it. The music and the dancing was fun. She got many of the jokes, too. Some we both missed because, let’s face it something that was funny in 1933 sometimes doesn’t quite translate. But much of it still holds up well. Andrew made it though most of the first act and then fell asleep, hard, on Allison. He slept through the end of the show, while I carried him to the car and all the way home. What a life.

In all, Annie is a great family performance that is worth seeing. The performances were well done and the girl who performed as Annie was fantastic.

If you are looking for tickets to the show you can go to www.anniethemusical.com and get tickets for shows from May 9 – 21st. You can also follow along on social media with @ANNIEonTour on twitter and www.facebook.com/AnnieTheMusical. More about the play below.

Directed by original lyricist and director Martin Charnin for the 19th time, this production of ANNIE is a brand new incarnation of the iconic Tony Award®-winning original.

ANNIE has a book by Thomas Meehan, music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Martin Charnin. All three authors received 1977 Tony Awards® for their work. Choreography is by Liza Gennaro, who has incorporated selections from her father Peter Gennaro’s 1977 Tony Award®-winning choreography.

The celebrated design team includes scenic design by Tony Award® winner Beowulf Boritt (Act One, The Scottsboro Boys, Rock of Ages), costume design by Costume Designer’s Guild Award winner Suzy Benzinger (Blue Jasmine, Movin’ Out, Miss Saigon), lighting design by Tony Award® winner Ken Billington (Chicago, Annie, White Christmas) and sound design by Tony Award® nominee Peter Hylenski (Rocky, Bullets Over Broadway, Motown). The lovable mutt “Sandy” is once again trained by Tony Award® Honoree William Berloni (Annie, A Christmas Story, Legally Blonde). Musical supervision and additional orchestrations are by Keith Levenson (Annie, She Loves Me, Dreamgirls). Casting is by Joy Dewing CSA, Joy Dewing Casting (Soul Doctor, Wonderland). The tour is produced by TROIKA Entertainment, LLC.

The production features a 25 member company: in the title role of Annie is Tori Bates, an 11-year-old actress from Sarasota, FL, making her tour debut. She most recently starred as Young Josephine in the sold-out run of Josephine at Asolo Repertory Theatre.

Gilgamesh Taggett continues to star as Oliver Warbucks. In the role of Miss Hannigan is Erin Fish. Also starring in the tour are Casey Prins as Grace Farrell, Michael Santora as Rooster, Mallory King as Lily and Jeffrey B. Duncan as FDR. Sunny and Macy, rescue terrier mixes, star as Sandy.

The orphans are Bunny Baldwin as Molly, Jacqueline Galvano as July, Ava Slater as Kate, Amanda Swickle as Pepper, Amanda Wylie as Tessie and Katie Wylie as Duffy.

The featured ensemble includes Timothy Allen, Todd Berkich, Katie Davis, Adam du Plessis, Mia Fitzgibbon, Caroline Lellouche, Conor McGiffin, Mackenzie Perpich, Connor Simpson, David Vogel, Anastasia Wolfe and Roxy York.

The original production of ANNIE opened April 21, 1977 at the Alvin Theatre and went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, seven Drama Desk Awards including Best Musical, the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album and seven Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, Best Book (Thomas Meehan) and Best Score (Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin). The show remains one of the biggest Broadway musical hits ever. It ran for 2,377 performances after it first opened, and has been performed in 28 languages and has been running somewhere around the world for 39 years.  
 
The beloved score for ANNIE includes “Maybe,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” “Easy Street,” “I Don’t Need Anything But You” and the eternal anthem of optimism, “Tomorrow.”

For tickets and information, visit:

www.anniethemusical.com