The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 69, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 15, 1981 Page: 12 of 20
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Thresher/Fine Arts
Annie: Could this be America's "favorite" musical
Annie
National Touring Cqmpany
Through Oct. 18 at the Music Hall.
The Kennedy Center touring
company's production of Annie
opened last week to the
thunderous applause of a receptive
Houston audience. Perhaps it
would have been better had the
applause continued through and
drowned out the show itself. Billed
as America's favorite musical, one
would expect a national touring
production to contain a very
talented, professional cast; one
might also expect the Astros to
win a five game series after winning
the first two.
The leading lady, ten-year-old
Bridget Walsh, took an interesting
approach to her singing,
discovering that it was easier to
bend notes than to hit them. To be
fair, M iss Walsh may have simply
7
Little Orphan Annie and Sandy: more
learned this technique from other
members of the cast. Miss Walsh
was able to win the admiration of
the audience by at once sounding
like the eleven-year old Orphan
Annie and a more mature
Broadway star, a trick she pulled
off remarkably well as long as she
cute than anything else.
stayed within her range.
Rhodes Reason, in the role of
Oliver Warbucks, maintained a
strong stage presence throughout.
However, his solos, technically
correct, failed to be impressive.
Mr. Reason's talent lay in his
acting ability, which was both
Art
Looking hard to see Art at CAM
F our Painters
Contemporary Arts Museum
Through November 29
Do you remember the story
about the Emperor's New Clothes?
Well, in the new exhibition at the
Contemporary Arts Museum,
Four Painters: Jones, Smith,
Stack. Utterback (October 10-
N ovember 29), the museum is the
Portion of one of Smith's works.
naked emperor and the painters
are the trickster-tailors. Dallas-
based Otis Jones is represented by
a series of chisel-shaped 2" X 4"s
that vary in paint color and length.
They look kind of nifty about 100
feet away, but they aren't art, and
they say nothing except that Jones
is a poor craftsman. The best
things about his work are the titles:
Quanch, Bluho, and Wamp are a
few. Gael Stack, a Houstonian,
scribbles on black canvas. The
catalog says that she's studied
aboriginal pictographs. Well that's
just great, but studied or not
they're still scribbles on canvas.
One called Mildred Pierce (1978)
looks like it was done with a wire
coat hanger and Pepto Bismal.
Robin Utterback has many mono
and dichromatic "field" paintings
in pretty colors with names like
No. 20, No. 5 and Untitled. Only
works of dead artists can
legitimately be entitled No.3 or
Untitled. Houstonian Utterback is
not dead and he's not an artist.
Dallasite Lee N. Smith III
combines oil painting, models,
dioramas and. borrowed objects
like bird skulls and strobe lights in
his presentations of his boyhood
adventures that range from Flight
Ceiling (1979), on the joys of
airplane modeling, to Weapon
Shops of San Marcus (1980),
which deals with weapon-making
for mock wars. Smith's works
deals with being a boy and
excludes females or makes them
fuzzy, pink beings always on the
fringe of events. But even with a
few read-in metaphors, his works
fail to become art, although they
are marvelous to behold.
In this show, the CAM is laid
bare, looking more like an
Emperor penguin than the self-
purported Art Scene Queen. If the
CAM wants more money and
public support then Curator Marti
Mayo should just change her basic
directive and stick some art in
there.
—Scott Bodenheimer
o
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commanding and, at times,
touching.
The production prided itself on
the eternal optimism of the
vagabond orphan. When,
confronted with the harsh reality
of freezing with a group of
homeless victims of the
Depression, Annis remarks, "It's a
good thing you've got those empty
pockets." This optimism is
endearing and yet undermining to
the play. With the outlook that
everything will always turn out
fine, any twists in the plot which
threaten the characters is rendered
impotent. Who could worry about
a character who says herself that
there is a bright side to every
situation?
The production fell flat on its
face in its struggle to present
melodramatic material in a
conventional fashion. The rags-to-
riches storyline chronicling
Annie's departure from the
abusive Miss Hannigan and
subsequent acceptance into the
Warbucks household is as trite and
mindless as the comic strip upon
which the musical was based. This
shortcoming could have been
overlooked had the production
reflected that simplistic, good
guy/bad guy genre of enter-
tainment. However, in this
presentation, one could most
easily sympathize with the
villainess, Miss Harrigan, when
she laments the pitfalls of raising
"Little Girls." When tne audience
finds itself caught up, however
slightly, in the point of view of the
scoundrel, interest in the plight of
the herione wanes, so that when
the conflict is resloved the
audience asks itself "WTio cares?"
Such is the case with Annie.
The-production was not without
its high points,, however. The part
of Grace Farrell, Mr. Warbucks's
secretary, was played by Lauren
Mitchell with such conviction and
joy that she often stole the show.
The star of the show was David
Mitchell's impressive set design.
Depending on highly mobile props
and backdrops operating from the
flys, Mitchell was able to switch
loctions for almost every number.
Aided by a rear projection screen,
the set was able to realistically
bring to life a wide range of decors
and atmospheres from the squalid
orphanage to the extravagant
splendor of the Warbucks
mansion. The most striking scene
of the evening, the political song
and dance "We'd Like to Thank
You," benefitted greatly from
Mitchell's incredible depiction of a
"Hooverville" beneath the 59th
Street bridge. Unfortunately the set
was not enough to compensate for
an otherwise disappointing
production of "the Best Musical of
1978."
Annie runs through October 18
at the Music Hall.
— Hal Kohlman
Wiess Tabletop Theatre's fall production The Mousetrap runs through
Saturday, October 17 in the Wiess Commons. Perhaps the finest play
of Agatha Christie's, it has been performed in London to sold-out
audiences for nearly three decades. Curtain time each night is 8 p.m.
Ticket price is $2.50, $2 for Wiessmen. For reservations, call the Wiess
office at 527-8101 x2308.
The Rice Thresher, October 15, 1981, page 12
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Davies, Bruce. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 69, No. 10, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 15, 1981, newspaper, October 15, 1981; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245482/m1/12/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.