Annie - UK Tour

ITs certainly a curveball. She will nail the comedy aspect totally! But i agree on whether it’s a good move - she’s not as mainstream as the other two have been. But let’s see.

Haha yes, but it could easily also be just me who thinks she's rather well known/a household name...which looks like it could be the case! 

MEERA SYAL!!! What an icon! The combined forces of Miranda Hart and Craig Revel Horwood couldn't convince me to go and see the show but I'll be down to catch Meera for definite.

Those of you who think you don't know her, trust me, you do. Listen to a recording of her voice and you'll realise that she's been in EVERYTHING. She even narrates many of my internal monologues

Such a good choice!

Not just you, she's a household name in my book too!

Meera Syal ..... National Treasure if ever there was one .

The Kumars! Hilarious!

Meera Syal? Goodness gracious me, who'd have thought?

I was expecting the announcement to be a disappointment, but excellent choice.

Will definitely get me to see the show again.

I saw her in Shirley Velentine at the Menier and she was very good but when I saw her in The Killing of Sister George at a the Arts Theatre not brilliant im afraid.

Does Craig do sundays?

It turned out I saw this last night. Before I review I suppose I should explain where I'm coming from with regard to this show as I would never have chosen to see it myself. Every year the family takes me to a 'surprise' show for my birthday. (Mr Tibs really should find a new hiding place for those tickets. ) They pick well on the whole, and this year Mr Tibs decided that because I guffawed somewhat at Craig Revel Horwood falling off his chair in Strictly last week, this would be just the ticket. (We will maybe skate over the fact that he actually thought we were going to see Annie Get Your Gun!) I do, in fact, like Craig, so it wasn't a bad choice.

Annie is one of those shows, a bit like Gone With the Wind, Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz, that you are never quite sure whether you have actually seen the whole way through or whether it just feels like you have. I wouldn't normally book to see a show full of kids unless I knew one of them personally. I only ever say nice things about kids unless, of course, I am talking to the mother of Little Ursula, who we have gone to see in her West End debut, in which case of course she was better than the girl playing the lead and what on earth was the director thinking casting Jemima instead when Ursula has a much greater range/cuteness factor/pushy mother.....Anyway. I will never say anything derogatory about child performers as it is often not completely their choice that they are even there in the first place. (Oh yes. True that!)

Another reason I wouldn't have chosen Annie is because I have heard so many renditions of The Sun Will Come Out and Hard Knock Life on the festivals circuit over the years that if I never hear another phoney child American accent in my entire life it will still be too soon.

(This hopefully doesn't sound ungrateful - I love that they take me to a secret show each year and put a lot of thought into what I might like. I'm just trying to explain my starting point in reviewing the show.) 

So. It all started a bit flat. Then came Hard Knock Life. Wow! It was like they'd injected those kids with gunpowder! It lifted the performance to another level and they should be congratulated. (A New Deal for Christmas was similarly performed.)

Craig RH was good - it would have been easy to have taken the performance to panto dame level, which he managed to avoid. Obviously, he can sing and dance a bit and we were left wondering how Miranda would have fared. I would have loved to have seen Paul O'Grady as I would imagine him much nastier to the kids. Craig was never truly horrible enough in my opinion. 

We all thought Mr Warbucks had the charisma of a gnat and this made the whole story about Annie and him falling for each other a bit of a non-starter. I thought Grace sang well, but musician Maxi Tibs kept muttering about her technique which was all over the place.... apparently! Rooster and Lily were horribly over-acted and it appeared that Jacob Rees-Mogg was moonlighting as Roosevelt.(!)

I also need to mention that on entering the auditorium the whole place reeked like a branch of Burger King - like walking into one of those shopping malls with an open food court. The smell actually got worse throughout the evening, even though we didn't see anyone eating burgers. 

All in all it was an enjoyable but totally forgettable show, carried by the orphans and Craig RH. We were all a bit taken aback by the number of actors at the bow - we'd presumed they'd doubled up - there were loads! It was also nice to see Annie get the final bow, despite there being a well known 'star' up there.

Edit. Sorry, but the dog was rubbish. She was so obviously uncomfortable and not a natural actoooor at all! Surely they could have trained her to sit during Annie's song, rather than standing with her tail down, waiting for a treat/her handler calling her off.