Optimism in challenging times must be found whenever and wherever you can uncover it.
For a short week at the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa the reminder that the sun will come out tomorrow is on handsome display in “Annie,” the musical that perpetually pursues hope and ultimately finds it in family.
Riding along on composer Charles Strouse’s still catchy jazz and vaudevillian period score — eternally propelled by “Tomorrow,” one of musical theater’s most effective earworms — these themes provide the enduring appeal of a girl’s Depression-era journey from hard-scrabble orphanage to Fifth Avenue mansion.
A positive to this production is the cool, calculating eye that director Jenn Thompson brings to the piece. Thompson, who played one of the orphans when the show started in 1977, has de-smudged sentimentality from her staging (well, apart from opening night’s rapturous “ooooh” from the hall’s farthest upper reaches greeting the first appearance of Sandy, live theater’s most renowned canine (more on him at the end if you want to just skip ahead).
Though an early number declares “it’s the hard knock life for us,” the pursuit of hopefulness can get gooey and “Annie” stagings are vulnerable to saccharine performances, which potentially lurk during the overplotted second act and Christmastime ending.
In September, Thompson was around the corner directing at South Coast Repertory, bringing similar brisk focus to the campy material of “Little Shop of Horrors.” Here, she is aided and abetted by her actors in the three lead roles.
Hazel Vogel’s Annie — her red wigs shaded to “flaming” — is a thoughtfully determined and practical waif. The actress often takes a beat before offering sage, no-nonsense counsel to her elders.
She’s also no pushover with her orphan pals, even if she loves them a lot: in the show’s first scene she shuts up bratty behavior with the crack “Do you want to sleep with your teeth inside your mouth or out?”
Her primary foe is Miss Hannigan, the orphanage’s matron of miseries. Stefanie Londino, an accomplished veteran of “Annie” tours, makes for a most thoroughly accomplished Charles Dickens-y villainess. Her Hannigan is an erratic tyrant, with comic booziness and sheer exhaustion pouring from every pore.
When Londino sings “Little Girls” plenty of self-loathing is on display; later, when a glint of the real malevolence emerges from within her, it’s not surprising.
Where Vogel offers matter-of-fact realism and Londino manifests dead-on-her-feet desperation, actor Christopher Swan’s Oliver Warbucks’ progresses from bumptious billionaire to an affectionate mensch, whose motivations to adopt Annie include self-actualization.
Swan is impressive at peeling back inner layers his character doesn’t know he has so that when he eventually sings Warbucks’ overly yearning mini-ballad “Something Was Missing,” it feels earned.
This production has above average generosity in staging and costuming than most touring shows around for a single week in Costa Mesa.
Against a background scrim of the Brooklyn Bridge contours and fronted by a metallic-looking arch around and above the stage, the settings go from appropriately ramshackle in the orphanage to suitably well-appointed in the mansion.
The costumes — a lot of green on display across the Warbucks’ servants — are also a cut above, though Annie gets saddled for a while with a mauve outfit that should never be worn by a redhead.
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What else? Ah, yes, Sandy.
Annie’s orphaned pooch is (so charmingly) undertaken by a 7-year-old labradoodle named Kevin.
Kevin arrives at Segerstrom having performed the role during the holidays at Madison Square Garden, so it’s difficult finding fault, particularly since the Costa Mesa audience went bonkers for him all the way through the curtain bows.
But a teeny aside in pursuit of theater realism: the first labradoodle was believed bred in Australia in 1989. Soooo, how can Kevin be found roaming the Manhattan streets in 1933?
Just sayin’.
‘Annie’
Rating: 3 stars (out of a possible four).
When: Through Sunday, Feb. 23: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m, Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
Tickets: $44.07-157.07
Information: 949-556-2787; scfta.org