Annie Waking Up at the End of the Show - "It Was All a Dream"?

Amanda is now head of the musical theatre program at Northwestern University.

She got her start taking drama classes and working backstage as a teen at our theatre.

She also created the ten-actor MY FAIR LADY at Trinity Rep, which Gary Griffin completely ripped off (and which multiple other directors then ripped off from him).

That actually sounds really badass... I loathe Annie with every fiber of my being. I'm glad someone decided to at least try something new.

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I wonder if some pretentious local theatre company will modernize Annie into 2010 and have it end that way. Hmm. I kinda want to see it...

Well, for any other group to do that would be illegal. Period. They don't have the right to f&@K with the ending.

Note: I am a hater of Annie as well. Ick.

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Damn, that's hilarious and depressing at the same time. I think wonderwaiter's post said it best.

"I saw Anne Bogart's On the Town at Trinity and I remember liking it."

I think that was the one that was set on a battleship, wasn't it? In the end, the battleship gets bombed? Or was her concept that they were playing it for an old folks home like it was a USO show? I've seen so many "reimaginations" I can't remember which concept goes with which show.

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It was set on a battleship. There were nurses involved to play the female roles (since women were not on battleships in WWII, Bogart had created a backstory about them being saved from a sinking hospital ship, but then she forgot to tell the audience the backstory). Everything in the design was made of things that might be found on a battleship. The dinosaur was made of tools - screwdrivers, hammers, pliers. This is the production/season that almost closed Trinity.

The gal is great at creating bizarre new pieces, but she has no idea how to tell a story. On The Town is a valentine to New York City; to set it anywhere else is just perverse.

As Sondheim said in the article referred to above, there are directors who think they know better than the writers. This kind of director uses a production to showcase him- or herself, rather than the piece.

Trinity Rep is my favorite company. I LOVE them. They try to engage with plays and ask what they have to tell us about life as we live it now. From Shakespeare to Simon and everything in between and beyond.

Their production of Paula Vogel's "The Long Christmas Ride Home" was one of the best things I have ever seen. Without access to Trinity, I probably would never have seen a production of "Homebody/Kabul."

When Oskar Eustis was artistic director, he mounted a production of "Angels in America" that was the only one I saw (out of many) that actually challenged the original Broadway production in my memory. It was intimate and breathtaking, and set the bar very high for the upcoming Signature presentation.

As for the Annie, (which I didn't see but which starred one of my very favorite of the Trinity actors, Fred Sullivan Jr. as Oliver Warbucks), Straus actually loved it, it was Adams who was adamantly against it.

I think daring companies try things, and sometimes they end up being told they've gone too far. I much prefer that over those companies that only play it safe.

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Punch and delete.

Goth who?

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I'm looking at my program for Bogart's On the Town. It has something called a Synopsis of Scenes. Act One: Brooklyn Navy Yard; a subway train; a New York street; Miss Turnstiles; A taxi cab; Museum of Natural History, and so on. A taxi cab on a battleship? There's nothing in the program to indicate a redefinition of the characters, or the action taking place on a battleship. Maybe Anne Bogart's notorious On the Town is just an urban legend.