Anything Goes is the delectable Cole
Porter Art Deco 1934 musical set on shipboard, revived periodically
but never so well as in its current reincarnation directed by Trevor
Nunn at the National Theatre.
With sophisticated lyrics and music
to match by the musical theater’s leading sophisticate of the 30s,
Porter’s well-known songs are all here, in addition to the title one
beginning, if anyone needs reminding: “In olden days a glimpse of
stocking/ Was looked on as something shocking/ But now, heaven
knows, anything goes./ Good authors too, who once knew better
words/ Now only use four-letter words, writing prose: anything
goes.”
Well performed, fast moving, and cleverly designed, the zany plot
has been revised by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman from the earlier
book by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, but it is still one of those
crazily involved stories so favored in its period. Billy Crocker
(John Barrowman), hopelessly in love with Hope (Mary Stockley), the
“deb who came out on a Zeppelin,” stows away on the liner that is
taking her from New York to London, where she is to marry Lord
Oakleigh (Simon Day), one of the inept aristocracy who people
Wodehouse and the later Monty Python’s Circus. Billy, when
discovered, has to assume several disguises, among them that of
Snakeyes Johnson, Public Enemy No. 1, and when this is discovered,
he is feted by the captain as the famous celebrity and star clout
for which his ship, the SS America, is famous.
Aboard too is Moonface (Martin Marquez), a
real machine-gun toting gangster, whose disguise as a priest does
not prevent him from making threats of murder. Sally Ann Triplett
in the Ethel Merman role of nightclub evangelist Reno Sweeney, belts
out “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” with fervor, if not quite the brass of
Merman in the role that made her famous. And Denis Quilley as a
tippling tycoon has the evening’s funniest riposte to a maxim of the
temperance movement that banned liquor in the U.S. and gave rise to
speakeasies: “Liquor has not touched my lips.” “You know a
short-cut?”
Choreographer Stephen Mears’ routines include a
show-stopping tap number by the whole company that closes the first
act, and “The Gypsy in Me” that brings on a gipsy band as Lord
Oakleigh lets down his hair. This exuberant musical, written for
pure enjoyment before lyrics became sentimental and moralized by
Hammerstein, reminds us of what fun musical theater could be, with
the clever words of “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “You’re the Top”
evoking the period: “You’re the National Gallery, you’re Garbo’s
salary, you’re Cellophane.” And notice the fun with juxtapositions
and interior rhymes: “You’re the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire/ You’re an O’Neill Drama, you’re Whistler’s Mama/ You’re
Camembert.”
With John Gunter’s cruise-line set that pushes
the huge white liner, with many doors, towards the audience and
Trevor Nunn’s stylish direction of a spirited cast that acts as well
as sings Porter’s songs, “Anything Goes,” is, to borrow his words
from another song, delightful, delicious, and delovely.
With sophisticated lyrics and music
to match by the musical theater’s leading sophisticate of the 30s,
Porter’s well-known songs are all here, in addition to the title one
beginning, if anyone needs reminding: “In olden days a glimpse of
stocking/ Was looked on as something shocking/ But now, heaven
knows, anything goes./ Good authors too, who once knew better
words/ Now only use four-letter words, writing prose: anything
goes.”
disguise as a priest does
not prevent him from making threats of murder. Sally Ann Triplett
in the Ethel Merman role of nightclub evangelist Reno Sweeney, belts
out “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” with fervor, if not quite the brass of
Merman in the role that made her famous. And Denis Quilley as a
tippling tycoon has the evening’s funniest riposte to a maxim of the
temperance movement that banned liquor in the U.S. and gave rise to
speakeasies: “Liquor has not touched my lips.” “You know a
short-cut?” 
And notice the fun with juxtapositions
and interior rhymes: “You’re the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire/ You’re an O’Neill Drama, you’re Whistler’s Mama/ You’re
Camembert.”