ANYTHING GOES: **** (out of five)
Festival Theatre, 2 hours 30 minutes, one intermission, ends Oct. 4. Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter. Original book by P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton and Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse. New book by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman. Directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad

Anything goes? Yes, indeed it does in this sparkling adaptation of the 1987 Broadway revival based on the 1934 hit. 

“Anything Goes,” directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad with music direction by Paul Sportelli, delivers big time.

Easy for us to love is the unabashed joy, energy, superb choreography and dancing, the convincing performances and, of course, the memorable music and witty lyrics of that master of the Great American Songbook, Cole Porter.

The setting is the early 1930s during the Great Depression and the S.S. American is sailing from New York to London with a ship’s manifest that is highly questionable. To sail was to be transported yet escape and for the wealthy, a special luxury.

The 1930s were the Golden Age of the great steamships of Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States, all in competition for the fastest transatlantic crossing and for celebrity passengers.

Charlie Chaplin has cancelled his passage to the chagrin of the ship’s captain, but on board is a well-known evangelist and nightclub singer.

Reno Sweeney is played by a vivacious Mary Antonini who brings the charisma, confidence and voice the part demands.  She sings a strong “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “You’re the Top,” holding her own against former Reno stars Ethel Merman, Patti LuPone and Sutton Foster.  

Reno is accompanied by her four Angels, the sassy and sexy gospel/nightclub singers and dancers, Charity, Chastity, Virtue and Purity. Their tap dancing with the ensemble sailors had the audience cheering.

We’re at sea so there’s love, but it’s complicated. Reno loves Billy Crocker, the young stockbroker and stowaway in besotted pursuit of the prim heiress and debutante, Hope Harcourt. 

Hope loves Billy but is engaged to a stuffy English aristocrat, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, and believes it proper to obey her mother. The widow, Evangeline Harcourt, is determined to recoup the status and wealth lost by the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Jeff Irving has the looks, charm and voice required for the role of Billy. Celeste Catena as Hope, brings a sad stoicism of duty to marry for money. Their solos of “Easy to Love” are of longing which soon fires up to desire in their dance duet “It’s De-Lovely.”  

Sharry Flett as Evangeline Harcourt brings refinement, elegance and a flirtatious bent in her quest to achieve her goals.  Shawn Wright as Elisha Whitney, plays for laughs a gruff, near-sighted Wall Street banker, Yale man and boss of Billy.

The surprise delight is Allan Louis as Lord Evelyn, a personable but stuffy twit with a penchant for American slang and a wild side, enthusiastically demonstrated by performing “The Gypsy in Me.”

The lovable gangster on the lam, Moonface Martin, played by Michael Therriault, aspires to move from Public Enemy #13 to #1 for greater celebrity appeal. His brassy moll, Erma Latour, is promiscuous, smart and fiercely independent with a New “Joisey” accent strongly delivered by Kristi Frank. 

This production is mesmerizing for its embrace of references. Sets are designed by Cory Sincennes in the Art Deco style of the era. Standing lanterns for the American echo the huge, tiered lights in the famous first-class dining hall of the S.S. Normandie. 

The flying bridge with double staircases allows for imaginative choreography and observation of the deck action and dancing from above. Side-by-side berths below decks effectively use the doors for a Feydeau type farce of actors dashing between rooms.

The lighting designed by Michael Kangas triggers and enhances changes of mood, action and location beginning with the giant porthole on the front curtain through which we first see the changing light of sunset to dusk on the waves of the sea. Dancing vertical stage lights and lit portholes continue to syncopate and change colour, enhancing events on stage.

The Hollywood movies of the 1930s were a source of sophisticated glamour profoundly influencing fashion, manners and aspiration. The wardrobes, makeup and hairstyles of movie stars such as Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford were avidly followed and emulated. 

The boyish flapper style of the 1920s changed in the 1930s to women’s garments cut on the bias to flatter the body and by featuring wide shoulders, narrow waists, fur trim and brighter colours. 

Long, revealing evening gowns of silk and satin clung to the body and sparkles were meant to dazzle. “Anything Goes” is worth seeing for the veracity, variety and beauty of wardrobe alone under the design and guidance of Sincennes. 

Cole Porter’s melodies and lyrics were written for theatre as witty marvels of rhyme and suggestion, often naughty, seldom censored. They reflect a man born to wealth and privilege, educated at Yale, who lived grandly in Paris, Venice and New York and yet instinctively understood and touched all levels of American society.

Despite constant pain from a riding accident that crushed his legs, Porter continued to score music and create clever lyrics of love, art, music, literature, travel and everyday life. 

Botticelli, the Louvre, Strauss, jazz, swing, cocaine, Ovaltine, seduction, the Nile, the Coliseum, champagne, Camembert, politicians and poets, all in and guaranteed to amuse.

Porter brought a lighthearted effervescence and joy to a world, including his own, of upheaval, pain and suffering. In our current period of uncertainty, not entirely dissimilar from the 1930s, this timely Shaw production of “Anything Goes” has audiences erupting in a catharsis of cheers, whoops and whistles of appreciation. Well-deserved.

Penny-Lynn Cookson is an arts and culture historian, writer and lecturer living in Niagara-on-the-Lake.