Anything Goes – Arena Stage, Washington DC 

Soara-Joye Ross and Corbin Bleu in Anything Goes at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, Washington DC. Picture: Maria Baranova.

Anything Goes continues at the Arena Stage, Washington DC until 23 December 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Times have changed! Molly Smith, artistic director of the Arena Stage, reinvents, re-evaluates and re-creates another Golden Age musical following the process she applied to South Pacific, Carousel, Camelot, and last year The Pajama Game.

Cross-cultural casting is not new to the Mead Center of American Theater, starting with Oklahoma!, when a Latino American actor was cast as Curly and African-American actors as Laurie and Aunt Eller (the first show at the Fichandler Theater when the centre reopened in 2010), followed by Camelot, where Asian and African actors were cast as knights of the roundtable, and My Fair Lady, with Asian-Americans in the role of Eliza Doolittle and her father.

So far, all major productions of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes have been cast with predominantly white cast members in leading roles, but to quote the director: “I wanted to see the SS American ship as a representation of America now. In looking at the SS American as a microcosm of America now we cast actors of colour in principal roles in the production and throughout.”

Anything Goes was written in 1934 and is still very much a creature of its time, despite the major book revisions made by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman for the 1987 Broadway revival. Whereas it was as natural for Smith to set up the conflict between native islanders and the US military in South Pacific, drawing a connection between the violence and cruelty of the Nazis in the 1930s and how the American Bill of Rights was threatened in 2006 during the Iraq war, as it was to make the issue of domestic abuse more visible in Carousel, Anything Goes raises a different issue by addressing the racist stereotypes embodied by John and Luke.

What is seen as racially insensitive today was supposedly not seen as such when the show was originally written, but through some conversations with Crouse and Weidman the problem was tackled by changing some lines and the way the characters are represented on stage, now among a multi-racial cast.

Heading that cast is the excellent Soara-Joye Ross, straight from John Doyle’s New York revival of Carmen Jones. Ross, although slightly too young for the part, brings a lot of energy aside from spectacular vocals and has a natural chemistry with her leading man, Corbin Bleu as Billy Crocker.

Reaching early fame after playing Chad in Disney’s award-winning High School Musical franchise, Bleu is fast becoming one of America’s foremost song and dance men with his fantastic tap-dancing abilities and warm vocals.

The rest of the cast is equally top-notch, especially Lisa Helmi Johanson as Hope Harcourt, Lisa Tejero as her mother, and Stephen DeRosa as Moonface Martin.

Every gold standard musical produced in the round of the Fichandler Theater needs to be reinvented, but Anything Goes naturally fits in the space even more than in a regular proscenium with its action taking place entirely in a boat, making Ken MacDonald’s minimalist set design work wonders, despite the occasionally dim lighting by Kimberly Purtell.

Parker Esse does an excellent job again, choreographing the talented but comparatively small ensemble, though it is hard to compare with Kathleen Marshall’s masterful work in the recent Broadway revival.

Cole Porter really managed, through burlesque, high and low comedy and satire, to chronicle the topsy-turvy nature of the world in 1934, with its famous mobsters like John Dillinger and superstar criminals like Bonnie and Clyde.

The national intoxication with fame still exists, making this musical mirror the state of America even today and explaining why it is so frequently, perhaps too often, revived, aside from the immortal Porter songs of course.

To quote Molly Smith again: “Why now? Because we’re in an ‘Anything Goes’ moment in America right now—where anybody can be whatever they want to be as long as you say you are – mobsters walk amongst us and are celebrated like Kings. Anything Goes is about our American obsession with celebrity, religion and how con men can fool most of the people most of the time.”

Another intimate innovative revival not to be missed.

Patrick Honoré