The organizers behind this year’s Ray Bolger Musical Theater production from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television refuse to let the recession put a damper on the perfectly sunny, breezy remaining days of the school year.
Opening this week at the Macgowan Little Theater, “Anything Goes” is a Cole Porter musical comedy filled with good old-fashioned songs and dance numbers, love stories and humor ““ complete with a 28-person cast and an art deco-themed set evocative of the 1930s.
“Anything Goes” is set on the high seas and follows the story of an accountant, Billy Crocker, who stows away on the S.S. American sailing from New York to England in hopes of winning the wealthy girl he’s fallen in love with, who is headed to marry her English boyfriend.
It is fitting, then, that “Anything Goes” first opened on Broadway in 1934 in the somber depths of the Great Depression.
Now in its 75th anniversary, the show finds itself in a similar socioeconomic climate.
“I realized it opened during the recession, and most of the characters are fairly upper-class ““ much like the oldest Astaire-Rogers musicals and all the musicals that made people happy during the Depression,” Gary Gardner, the show’s director and a theater professor, said.
“Right now, we are in terrible financial times. Instead of seeing something heavy and thought-provoking, it’s spring ““ let’s laugh.”
Gardner said that Porter was one of five premier songwriters in U.S. history. Of the five, only Porter and Irving Berlin wrote both music and lyrics on their own.
While Berlin composed mainly patriotic songs, Gardner said that Porter’s were “all kind of tongue-in-cheek, kind of winking. They say one thing, and they might mean another thing.” Gardner said that “naughty” is the first word to come to mind when he thinks of Porter.
The musical’s singing, sexy character, Reno Sweeney, is based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who Gardner said preached from a tent on the Santa Monica Municipal Pier in the ’20s and ’30s.
“Now, she was a good religious woman,” he said. “But this was Cole Porter’s version of her … as preaching, but being half-dressed while she’s preaching.”
What little clothes Reno dons are varied and stylish. Fourth-year theater student Jessica Armstrong, who plays Reno under the stage name Jessica Keenan Wynn, said that her set costumes vary from full-length gowns to short dresses.
“It’s also a fashion show for the costumes,” Armstrong said.
The costumes and set seem to achieve the showiness a classic musical comedy calls for, despite the present financial situation that meant a smaller budget for the show.
The show’s scenic designer, Phil Storrs, recently completed the scenic design graduate program in the School of Theater, Film and Television and now teaches a course there.
“I’m trying to do the most that I can given the resources that I have,” Storrs said. “You’re just pushing the limits of what’s available.”
The set has an impressive three stories and three turntables to accommodate the seven different looks and scene changes demanded by the show, Storrs said.
The sheer scale of the set, which is designed to represent the back-end of the ship as it would sail away from the audience, makes the Little Theater space seem larger than it actually is.
Although Gardner believes the Little Theater space is insufficient for a show like “Anything Goes,” he explains that in the last eight years, economic constraints have kept the school from using the more spacious Freud Playhouse, instead renting it out to groups such as the Reprise Theatre Company.
The money generated by that benefits the department and its students by maintaining scholarships, fellowships and programs.
On the plus side, however, Gardner pointed out that in the Little Theater, the audience can see every single expression.
“Most people are used to seeing musicals in the Pantages and the Ahmanson, and you’re sitting so far back you can’t know who’s singing,” he said. “This ““ you’re right in the same room with the actors.”
Although most audiences won’t be familiar with Ethel Merman’s original Broadway performance of “I Get a Kick Out of You,” the show’s first song, many may recall popular cover versions by contemporary musicians of the time: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.
Gardner especially credits the sound of the words and rhymes to Porter’s strength.
“I just love it every time I hear, “˜I get no kick in a plane, flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea’ ““ I mean, that’s good lyric-writing,” he said.
“I think people will go, “˜Oh! I didn’t know that was a Cole Porter song,'” said fourth-year musical theater student Joe Bettles, who plays Crocker. “They’ll recognize a couple songs.”
Although the show may not carry particularly deep meaning, Bettles believes there are themes of coming-of-age, maturing and unrequited love that he can personally relate to. These universal themes remain relevant no matter what day and age, during economic boom or recession.
“I hope, if nothing else, the audience will laugh,” Bettles said. “There’s a lot of dazzle. … There’s a lot of silliness. I hope everyone gets carried away by that.”