The Midnight Train Crossing

We were invited to see South Milwaukee High School's production of Anything Goes . I've never been to that school before, and it felt a bit more like a college campus than a high school. Life in suburbia I suppose.

While Anything Goes isn't my favorite musical in the whole world, I like a lot of the songs, especially the title song. After standing in line for what seemed like an abnormally long time we got our tickets and took our seats. I rather like looking young. Take that as you will.

Anyway, I was totally impressed by the quality of the performance, costumes and set. Even their sound system worked! There weren't anymore sound problems than you see in a professional show.
Since it was a high school production, there were the usual occasional times when you couldn't understand the singers, and sometimes the groups of girls got too high.

I'll talk about the set first since that always makes the first impression. Anything Goes takes place on a cruise ship - the SS American so the stage was the deck of the ship with the usual rails and deck chairs. It looked very professional. But I thought the scenes that took place in the cabins were even more impressive. They closed the curtains and brought out these... they were sort of like large boxes which were meant to be the cabins of the ship. I thought that was very clever. Then they wheeled them out and opened the curtains again to bring them back on deck.

During the Overture, they had the various characters wandering around the stage as they got 'settled' aboard. Most of the main characters walked past carrying cardboard life preservers with their names printed on them. That made it much easier to tell who was who.

Reno Sweeney, the former evangelist turned night club singer, played by Jackie Green was bold and brassy and everything I think Reno should be. She had a powerful voice, and strutted around the stage with all of Reno's confidence. The sparkles in her various costumes definitely helped. Reno has most of my favorite songs: "You're the Top", "Friendship", "Anything Goes" and "Blow Gabriel, Blow"

Bonnie (Caitlin Wolf), the classic gangster's girlfriend was quite awesome, and she played very well alongside of Moonface Martin (Adam Seaman), Public Enemy #13, disguised as a cleryman. I think that Moon pretty much stole the show from the moment he snuck across the stage with his life preserver. He had a great sense of timing and his New York gangster accent was perfect. I could definitely see why he had never made it higher than Public Enemy #13. And he was so insecure about his status too. It was adorable.
He had a song, "Be Like The Bluebird" where he tweets. He had a nice voice, I'd love to hear what he would song like singing a pretty song.

And Sir Evelyn Oakleigh (Eric Wittwer) was absolutely hilarious with his fake British accent and his general clueless-ness about the entire world. I can't really say what I thought of his singing voice because during "Let's Misbehave" , his duet with Reno, his microphone cut out a lot.

Billy Crocker (Tim Backes) is the protagonist. I'm not sure if I'd call him the hero because he is a bit of a brat at times. He enlists the help of Reno and Moon to get to his girlfriend, Hope Harcourt (Leah Costello). The trouble is, Hope is engaged to Sir Evelyn. (Yes, they make fun of his name a lot) He goes through a whole series of disguises to try to get to her, including Snake-eyes Johnson, Public Enemy Number One. (Obviously this was before a certain caboose came on the scene).
As a result of all of his disguises, Billy also had a lot of funny parts. One of my favorite bits was when he was disguised as sailor and the captain(Brennan O'Lena) ordered him to help him look for Snake-eyes.
Reno: "Who are they looking for?"
Moon: "Billy."
Reno: "Well I'm sure Billy will be a great help in that"
And about five minutes later, Billy returns to laughingly tell Reno that "We couldn't find me"

To complicate matters, Billy's boss, Mr. Elisha Whitney (Justin Yates) is staying right in the cabin next door to Billy and Moon. Billy, of course, is supposed to be back in New York working - and certainly not crossing the ocean with a ticket and passport belonging to the real Snake-eyes Johnson. Moon has a solution to that problem. He simply steals Mr. Whitney's glasses. This meant that Whitney spent the rest of the voyage - and the show - wandering around aimlessly because he couldn't see.

Billy enlists the help of Reno to break up Evelyn and Hope. So Reno heads to Evelyn's stateroom to seduce him, in quite possibly the funniest scene in the whole play. She's dressed in a lovely black and silver dress, while Evelyn is... well... in his underwear. She's doing her best, but he's clueless to the whole thing.

Another very funny scene was the "service" once Reno took over. I guess old habits die hard, and she just couldn't resist. She urged people to confess their sins, and one of her angels (her back up singers) confessed that she was "Cursed with sex appeal" To which Reno replied, "That's not confessing, that's advertising". Then she launched into "Blow Gabriel, Blow" , one of my favorite songs.

Of course at the end of the show, everyone gets together with their proper partner and they all live happily ever after.
They did a really good job for a high school production