‘Annie’ opens Thursday at Manatee Performing Arts Center

“Annie” is a 40-year-old musical. Manatee Players are a 64-year-old theater company.

Somehow, the twain never met until now.

The Tony Award-winning show (Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score and four others) is next up at Stone Hall at the Manatee Performing Arts Center. It opens Thursday for a three-week run.

It’s the first time Manatee Players has done the venerable show (which producing artistic director Rick Kerby calls a “chestnut”), but director Cheryl Carty is an old “Annie” hand. She’s directed the show several times at other area theaters,.

“The show has been performed around the world since 1977,” she said, “but I think it is especially relevant today. We’re all in political turmoil. We may not be in an actual Depression, but we’re in a kind of emotional Depression.”

The show, as almost everyone knows, is based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. It revolves around a girl with an optimistic spirit despite her surroundings, the Dickensian orphanage during the Great Depression. She’s taken in by Oliver Warbucks, the richest man in America, and she ends up charming the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Louis Brandeis.

It’s been a challenging show to stage, Carty said, mostly because there are two Annies (Julianne Teague and Alanna Rife) and two different groups of orphans, who alternate performances. That means they also have to split rehearsal time.

Annie is famously devoted to her dog Sandy, and the Manatee Players cast also features two Sandys. One of the two Annies, Julianne, is younger and slighter (“a little wisp of a thing,” Carty said) and has never had a dog. So they had to find a very small dog that wouldn’t overpower her, that she could feel comfortable with, and that would behave on stage.

“I think we’ve met the challenges,” Carty said.

Fans of the show may notice a difference in this production. Carty has included an optional song titled “Why Should I Change a Thing,” which was added to the show for a 2000 Australian production. Directors generally opt to keep the song out, but Carty likes the song’s sentiment. Daddy Warbucks sings it at a time when he’s wondering whether he should disrupt his life by taking in Annie.

People who have never seen the show probably know its most popular song, the almost-cloying “Tomorrow.” It’s actually an atypical song for”Annie,” which has a lot of dark elements in the story, but a lot of hooks in the music.

“The music is just catchy,” said Andrea Kedell, who plays the villain, Miss Hannigan, in this staging. “The songs do get into your head. I sing one song, ‘NYC,’ to myself all day at work.”

Details: Nov. 30-Dec. 17, Stone Hall at the Manatee Performing Arts Center, 502 Third Ave. W., Bradenton. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $27-$37. 941-748-5875 , manateeperformingartscenter.com.

Marty Clear: 941-708-7919, @martinclear

This story was originally published November 28, 2017 at 3:05 PM with the headline "‘Annie’ opens Thursday at Manatee Performing Arts Center."