Nobody, but nobody, can put a dog down his pants the way Stephen DeRosa can.
I can think of many shows at the Goodspeed Opera House over the years where the comic relief roles were played by actors who just weren’t innately funny. They depended too heavily on a script, or a tradition, or they simply believed that if something is meant to be funny, it will be.
Those guys wouldn’t know the first thing about putting a dog down their pants. DeRosa raises canine trouser-confinement to a high art.
DeRosa plays Moonface Martin, Public Enemy No. 13, in “Anything Goes,” at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam through June 16.
I am a long-standing DeRosa fan. If necessary, he is capable of saving, or stealing, a show with just a sidelong glance or expertly timed riposte. But he is at his best when he can blend naturally into a well-tuned ensemble, as he did in “These Paper Bullets!” at the Yale Rep a few years ago, or in the 2002 Broadway revival of “Into the Woods.”
“Anything Goes” has such an ensemble. DeRosa is great in it, but so is everybody else.
It takes a ship full of talent to make any “Anything Goes” float. There are some who might believe that this show is surefire, non-stop, foolproof entertainment, by dint of it having songs by the great Cole Porter and a book credited to P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. But that book, legend has it, was hastily concocted en route to the show’s first out-of-town try-out. Outside of the bare bones of the plot — man stows away on cruise ship to keep the woman he loves from marrying a rich British twit — Bolton and Wodehouse’s contributions are barely evident.
The admirable though uneven work of Lindsay and Crouse (seasoned show doctors who went on to write the hit play “Life With Father” and the book for “The Sound of Music”) was extensively revised in 1987 by John Weidman and Russel Crouse’s son, Timothy, who gave the show more cohesion while also sprinkling in lots of random one-liners and running gags. They also augmented the score with a couple of Cole Porter hits (“Friendship,” “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye”) from other musicals.
The Goodspeed production makes full use of that revision. It shares an excellent casting concept with that 1987 production: having an African-American pop singer in the leading role of brassy cabaret singer Reno Sweeney, a role originated by Ethel Merman. Thirty years ago it was Leslie Uggams. Now it’s the twinkly-eyed Rashidra Scott, direct from the Broadway cast of the Carole King musical “Beautiful.” Scott dances as well as she sings, which is really saying something when you hear her exquisite, snappily enunciated rendition of “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
David Harris plays the romantic hero Billy Crocker as a bit of a rugged adventurer. The woman whom Billy risks his career to be with, Hope Harcourt, is played with a special fragility and sensitivity by Hannah Florence.
Director Daniel Goldstein takes a strong production and builds upon it, finding fresh drama in the lyrics of the songs and in the spatial relationships of the dancers. Choreographer Kelli Barclay and costume designer Ilona Somogyi are both able to smoothly shift from sharp, colorful tones to smooth, slinky ones, based on whatever mood the show has deftly shifted to.
An immense amount of effort has been expended here to make sure that every joke lands, every high note is hit and every dance step has a kick to it. An equally immense amount of effort has been spent making it all look effortless.
A strong supporting cast includes Desiree Davar as sexpot Emma, who’s as adept at getting sailors out of their pants as Moonface Martin is at getting a dog into his; Benjamin Howes as haughty-then-earthy Lord Evelyn Oakleigh; Denise Lute as Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt, who pushes her daughter Hope into a loveless relationship; Jay Aubrey Jones as the star-struck ship’s captain; Kingsley Leggs as the boozehound businessman Elisha J. Whitney, whose numerous references to his (and Cole Porter’s) alma mater Yale have a real resonance here in Connecticut; and Patrick Richwood as the Purser, reacting with googly-eyed wonder to all the ridiculousness happening on deck. All have their moments of extreme mirth. Even the show’s band, visible on the boat-shaped set’s upper deck, dressed in white dinner jackets like a ship’s orchestra, get to deliver a punch line.
The Goodspeed, perhaps because it has the Connecticut River in its backyard, has a particular knack for shows set on boats. There’s been “Showboat,” “Dames at Sea,” “Big River” and “Ankles Aweigh,” to name a few. “Anything Goes” goes to the head of that fleet.
(Oh, and about that dog. … No animals are harmed in the making of “Anything Goes.” The company is soliciting donations for the Connecticut Humane Society at each performance through the end of April.)
“ANYTHING GOES,” with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and book by John Weidman, Timothy Crouse, Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, directed by Daniel Goldstein, is at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam through June 16. Performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 2 p.m., with added Sunday evening performances on May 1 and 8. Tickets are $34 to $84. Information: 860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.
