By Jenny Neyman
Photos courtesy of Lee Johnson. Miss Hannigan (Larissa Notter) interacts with her former orphanage charge, Annie (Hunter Hanson) in a recent rehearsal of "Annie."
Redoubt Reporter
Usually in theater, “getting into character” means a literal and figurative process — actors make an inner transition to the mindset of whomever they are playing, while putting on a physical costume to complete the outward transformation.
That’s certainly true for many of the characters in the Kenai Performers’ production of the musical “Annie,” opening this weekend in Kenai. Larissa Notter dons a snappish attitude along with the flamboyant, draping robes of Miss Hannigan. Chelsea Hart buttons up her mannerisms as well as her smart suits as Grace Farrell. Hunter Hanson, playing the title character, has changed her hair color to the red Annie is known for in the 1982 film version of the show, and shifts from the rags she wears at the orphanage to the iconic red dress, white socks and shiny black
Oliver Warbucks (Ian McEwen) and Grace Farrell (Chelsea Hart) comfort Annie (Hunter Hanson) during her search for her parents.
shoes she wears once moving to Oliver Warbucks’ estate.
But for Ian McEwen, his transition into Warbucks involves more taking away than getting into.
First off, he removes the restraint he usually keeps over his naturally high-decibel voice.
“I can be very, very loud without actually yelling. I project very, very well. And Warbucks gets to be very, very loud, and push people around and bowl them over with my voice,” McEwen said.
Even more noticeable is what else he lost to play Warbucks — his hair.
Miss Hannigan (Larissa Notter), tries her wiles on the laundryman, Bundles McCloskey (Chris Pepper).
“Oliver Warbucks does not have hair. Never has. Not in the movie or the cartoon. (“Little Orphan Annie” was originally a comic strip.) And I knew I wasn’t going to do a bald cap, because they’re more trouble that they’re worth,” McEwen said.
So, in January — to give himself time to get used to his newly ventilated head — off came his shaggy locks, and on came a better fit into Warbucks.
“As soon as I took the hair off the character came together a lot more. You’re not pushing your hair behind your ears anymore,” McEwen said. “It affects the way you carry yourself.”
He didn’t need any cajoling to lose his hair for his part. Since he started his acting training in college, McEwen said he’s felt like a Woolly Willy toy, where kids use a magnet to drag iron filings around a
Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Garry), center, and his cabinet are called into service to help Annie find her missing parents.
guy’s otherwise-bare face and head.
“I’ve had a full goatee and no hair, hair to my shoulders. I don’t mind changing my appearance for a show. For ‘The Cherry Orchard’ by Anton Chekhov, I was bald. Two weeks before it opened the director asked, ‘Have you ever thought of going bald for a show?’ I said, ‘No, but I would,” McEwen said.
The dance chorus performs a number in Oliver Warbucks’ mansion.
“It’s been fine. I have a hat that I wear most of the time. But I doubled my makeup budget for the show. Now I start at my neck and come all the way up and around.”
Dedication to a character can come about in less-obvious ways, as well. For Miss Hannigan, Notter didn’t have to go bald, but she is going blind, removing her glasses in order to remove ties to her own personality in order to sink further into Hannigan’s.
She may have gone a little too far, her castmates tease.
“She’s a mix between Cruella DeVille and Ursula and the Wicked Witch of the West,” said Chris Pepper, who is part of the dance chorus as well as playing Mr. Bundles the laundryman and a butler in Warbucks’ estate.
Notter said she always tries to create a backstory for whatever character she plays, in order to try and understand the character better. That’s been easy with previous, smaller roles, where they aren’t central to the plot. With a main character, much of their story is already fleshed out in the script. But that didn’t stop Notter from still trying to add some dimension. Or was that dementia?
“This is the biggest role I’ve ever had. I’ve always developed characters, even
Bert Healy (Mick Audette), center, leads performers in a broadcast of his radio show.
if they didn’t have a name,” Notter said. “Developing the character for Miss Hannigan has been so much fun. I thought, since we’re playing down the drunkenness for her character (in the movie version, Carol Burnett’s Hannigan is a slurring, hiccupping lush), I thought I’d better go in an insane direction.”
Miss Hannigan, her brother, Rooster (Spencer McAuliffe) and his girlfriend, Lily (Kelsey Higginson), wax musical about someday making it to easy street.
Miss Hannigan in the film version of “Annie” is a variation from the stage version, which allows Notter to make the character her own.
“She doesn’t have a redemptive moment in the play like she does in the movie,” McEwen said.
“I’m just evil,” Notter said. “I’m insanely evil.”
“Seems more insane than evil,” McEwen joked.
Notter explained that she sees her character as damaged more than just deranged. As she imagines it, Hannigan and her brother, Rooster (played by Spencer McAuliffe), were raised by a single, alcoholic mother.
“She loved him more than me. And she actually hated me, which is where I get the idea for Hannigan’s line, ‘I hate that Annie so much, you’d think I was her mother.’ She knows how to play the system based on how mother played the system,” Notter said.
Notter got creative in imagining why Hannigan may be so hateful toward Annie.
“This guy, who was most likely the love of her life, got her a job (running the orphanage) and was supposed to be her ticket out of town. But he was killed while saving a little girl that looked a lot like Annie,” she said.
“Oh yeah, she went deep,” Pepper teased.
Perhaps a little off the deep end in character development, but that level of attention to detail helps Notter give even her bad-gal character a touch of humanity. Sure, Hannigan is a loud, mean, self-centered, black-hearted bully, but she got that way through heartache of her own.
“She’s not quite as evil as Rooster. She’s opposed to the idea of killing Annie, but there’s enough money involved that she’s willing to look the other way,” Notter said.
Attention to detail can be seen throughout the show, said McEwen, who also is serving as the assistant director to Phil Morin.
“As the entire package is coming together it’s really fun, especially with the costumes and sets,” McEwen said. “The images that we’re putting onstage, there are some really cool moments with the dances and the spectacle of it.”
For Pepper, the level of precision being honed in the songs and dances has been impressive to experience.
“We’ve been working on being precise and in unison. The directors have really been focusing on every single detail because they know we can tighten it up more every time,” he said.
The same goes for the actors showing commitment to the months of hard work the rehearsal process has involved, McEwen said.
“For me, one of best things is working with Hunter (playing Annie). She is a doll. She had her lines and all of her songs down so fast, and she was cueing other people, ‘You’re supposed to say this.’ She’s been working so hard and doing such a great job, it’s been so much fun to work with her,” he said.
He’s also having a blast with Warbucks. Being a huge fan of Albert Finney, who played Warbucks in the film version of “Annie,” McEwen said that it’s been fun to take on a role so famously played by one of his acting idols. But even without that added spice, the Warbucks character is plenty meaty.
“He’s a character that really comes a long way in 2.5 hours with him. He starts out just a bull, he plows through everything and gets his way no matter what. Then this little girl comes into his life and spins him around. He thinks of other people before himself, he’s asking for help where he never would have before, he found the ability to care for other people more than himself. He offers to help Annie find her parents even through it means she won’t be with him,” McEwen said.
That basic plot structure of the stage version of “Annie” is the same as the film — little orphan Annie gets chosen to go live with Oliver Warbucks, ends up melting his heart to the point where he volunteers to try to help find her parents, who gave her up in a time of desperation, only to have Miss Hannigan and her scheming brother, Rooster, attempt to kidnap and kill Annie as a way to swindle their way into the reward money Warbucks is offering.
But there are differences, too. The time of year is changed and some of the action points are altered. Film fans wanting to hear their favorite songs, such as “Tomorrow,” “Little Girls” and “Easy Street,” won’t be disappointed, and they’ll hear even more numbers with which they may not be familiar.
In a way it’s the best of both worlds, McEwen said. There’s enough of the familiar framework for people who have seen the film to enjoy the stage musical, and enough differences to allow the cast some creative freedom in making this production their own.
“One benefit we have is the fact that the (film) version everyone is so familiar with is so different from the stage show. There’s still enough there that’s going to be recognizable, but it’s fun to take something that is recognizable across the board and put a spin on it that makes it something brand new,” McEwen said. “My main role has been helping to get the image Phil (Morin, the director) has in his head up onto that stage, and I think it’s really coming together. But we still have a lot of familiar things — the fact that I’m bald, and we have Annie with the red dress and red hair. The iconic images are there, but the stuff in between people are going to go, ‘This is something I didn’t expect,’ in a good way.”
It’s been fun for those involved to watch the final product emerge, Pepper said.
“It’s exciting because you know what show you’re doing — what the plot is — but there’s no way to know the end product. You just watch all the pieces fit together into the end product, and it’s exciting to see that,” he said.
With opening night this weekend, the actors, dancers, directors, musicians and all the crew are hoping audiences will come get into their performance, as well.
“Come enjoy the show. It’s not a show without the audience,” McEwen said.
The Kenai Performers’ production of “Annie,” written by Thomas Meehan, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin and directed by Phil Morin, will be performed Feb. 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, and March 2, 3 and 4 at the Renee C. Henderson Auditorium at Kenai Central High School. Show times are 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $20 for general admission and $15 for students and seniors, available at River City Books in Soldotna, Charlotte’s Restaurant and Curtain Call Consignment in Kenai, at the door and online at www.kenaiperformers.org.
Break a leg, Kenai Performers! I know it’ll be great!