This hit Broadway musical by Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse received a humorous retelling at the La Jolla Stage Company with a small but quality production of this entertaining show featuring Shannon Partrick as the optimistic redhead. Shannon, who led the way to The Secret Garden in one of La Jolla Stage Company’s most successful shows, delivers a charming performance with some lovely singing of Tomorrow and the sweet ballad Maybe as she wistfully dreams of the parents she has never met but who hopefully are still coming for her.

It is not her parents who come to her rescue, but Grace Farrell (billionaire Oliver Warbucks’ beautiful personal secretary) whom Catherine A. Stevens plays with such natural warmth and effervescence in every moment. That’s a big change from Miss Hannigan – the mean and nasty person in charge of the adoption home. Paula Pierson’s drunken diatribe about the Little Girls who are the bane of her existence sums up this piece of work quite perfectly. But maybe her nastiness is just all in the genes. Enter the real villains of the show, Miss Hannigan’s con artist and jailbird brother Rooster and his ditzy new gal Lily St. Regis. Skyler Dennon and Lia Metz are a sleazy riot as they plot their course for Easy Street joined by Miss Hannigan.

Other fine performances are rounded out by Donal Pugh as Daddy Warbucks, Jim Granby as Jimmy Johnson and his singing Boylan Sisters who make the most out of being on the radio (they’re not really as cheery as they sound), and of course the other orphans who turn in their best number with their enthusiastic take-off of the Boylan Sisters in You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile.

Rob Hopper
San Diego Playbill