The 'Broadway Bound' theatre boot camps run in Wimberley each summer by Lee Colée have become so popular that for the just-completed production of Cole Porter's 1934 musical comedy Anything Goes, she was instructing and directing a cast of 39 young persons ranging in age from 8 to 18. The turnout was so strong that she took the initiative of organizing the players into different configurations for "odd" performance dates (with the older players in the principal roles) and for "even" performance dates (with the younger members taking the leads). I attended a performance of the "even" cast, which had an extraordinary feel, very similar to that of Alan Parker's Buggsy Malone, the 1976 film in which a star cast of children including Jodie Foster and Michael Jackson did a gangster musical.
Cole Porter put a gangster or two on board the cruise ship U.S.S. American, but they were harmless or inept. The story is straight out of the Depression-era dreams of glamor and glitter, as earnest and underpaid Billy seeks to court heiress Hope Harcourt, prying her from the surveillance of her mother and from the attentions of her stuffy English presumptive fiancé Sir Evelyn Oakleigh. Mix in a missionary bishop back from China with a trio of Chinese converts, assorted pretty girls, woman evangelist-turned-nightclub-singer Reno Sweeney, and a whole lot of white-clad sailors, and you can keep the decks full of silliness and celebration.
Click to read more and view images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
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