Anything Goes

This musical has lasting appeal and it was all aboard the steamship “SS American” at the Theatre in Cumnock Academy to see CAMPS’ spring show. It is amazing to think this show had its premiere on Broadway as long ago as1934 and that numbers such as the title music “Anything Goes” and others such as “All Through the Night”, “You’re the Top” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” are all still fresh to today’s audiences.
The story is well known as are the characters from the thirties. Philip Doole played the foppish Lord Evelyn Oakleigh in one of the best performances I have seen him give with Sarah Hainey as his youthful “intended” – Hope Harcourt.  Ann Black was suitably cast as Hope’s impoverished socialite mother Evangelina Harcourt. Frank Paterson gave a fine performance as the millionaire Elisha J. Whitney, Alistair Dempster being cast in the role of Billy Crocker his hard working but slightly ineffective clerk. Comedy lay with Dempster Slimmon as the minor gangster Moonface Martin, promoted to public enemy number one by means of a false passport and a cunning twist in the plot. William Hainey showed his versatility as the Right Reverend Bishop Henry T. Dobson in that character’s brief appearance and also as Fred, the bar-tender. Scott Riddex and Kirsty Langfield (the latter also double cast) took the parts of Luke and John, Henry T. Dobson’s supposed converts from gambling. Glamour was provided by Lyndsay Cook as Reno Sweeney, the evangelist converted to night-club singer with her somewhat dubious acolytes Virtue (Rebecca Mackie), Charity (Skye Galloway), Purity (Anne Hainey) and Charity (Kirsty Langfield). Matt McCreadie played the dignified but harassed Captain of the SS American. All of the other principal line-up was well cast and some assisted in the chorus.
I was particularly impressed by MD Robert Lowe’s twelve-piece orchestra which brought Cole Porter’s music to life in a perfect balance. One certainly left the theatre with the melodies fresh in the mind.

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