The Phantom of the Opera. Hello, Dolly. Dear Evan Hansen. If the title of a musical features the main character of that musical, it’s a double-edged sword for the star: theatergoers aren’t coming just to see the show, they’re coming to see them. They’re paying the ticket price (and the parking fee, and the gas, and the babysitter…) to see an actor who’s so spectacular that it’s worth naming a musical after their character. So they better be damn good.
As the star of Annie at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, 12-year-old Eve Scharback is damn good, at least in the Strousian measure. When composer Charles Strouse wrote the songs for this beloved rags-to-riches musical 50 years ago, he deliberately wrote Annie’s tunes higher than child actors (and their voice teachers) think they can sing. “The emotional part of the music is when kids sing high,” Strouse once told Terry Gross. “And very often, they found that they could reach notes which, on their resumes, they couldn’t reach at all. And that was the sound I wanted.”
Not only does Scharback send “Tomorrow” to the rafters, but she’s pitch perfect in the opening tearjerker “Maybe,” the rip-roaring “Hard-Knock Life” and the heartwarming “I Don’t Need Anything But You,” songs so well-known you’re probably inadvertently humming them to yourself while you read this. If you are buying your ticket for this Annie explicitly to see Annie, Scharback’s vocals will blow you away. (She’s alternating the role with Alayna Gardner. All six orphans alternate with other kids, too.) Unlike the grade school and community theater productions you may have seen, there will be no anxious twisting of your program hoping the little red-headed orphan can hit the high notes.
After attending opening night on October 9, I wouldn’t recommend you pin all your hopes on Annie, though, or her reluctant-benefactor-turned-adoptive-father Oliver Warbucks (Danté Jamar Lamonte Murray). Helmed by director and choreographer Tamara Kangas Erickson, this holiday production running through Februrary reminds me of the Polar Express: a well-oiled machine that’s chock-full of sugary cheer and isn’t stopping for anything, even the quiet moments that could turn these characters from the comic strip cartoons they’re based on into something the audience can hold onto.
First, the sweets, which are bountiful. The 10-person orchestra led by music director Andy Kust gives you the first dose as the dinner plates are whisked away and the lights go down: a lush rendition of the overture, which will remind you of the greatness of Strouse’s score, without the distraction of Martin Charnin’s sometimes cheeky, sometimes cutting lyrics. The orchestra doesn’t take its eye off the prize until the audience is shuffling out after curtain call, a feeling we can all thank sound designer Russ Haynes for as well.
Despite the show’s singular focus on Annie (on opening night, we walked through a balloon arch of a sunrise past a bus plastered with a picture of Scharback in a red wig), the highly capable, impossibly peppy cast makes this musical feel like more of an ensemble spectacular than ever. Even the smallest bit parts will stick with you.
As radio announcer Bert Healy, who brings on Annie and Daddy Warbucks to make a plea to find her parents, Tommy McCarthy ups the wattage until it feels like there’s nothing else onstage except his dazzling pearly whites. When the orphans do their own rendition of Healy’s song “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” the crystal-clear voices and self-assured choreography of Lucy Anderson, Evie Blake, Eloise Cassens, Margot Lukkasson and Kala Willms (the child cast I saw) will have you itching to break into applause once they hit their chorus line.
Chris Owusu even turns a stage crossing into a highlight: When Mr. Warbucks’s assistant Grace Farrell (Anna Hashizume) introduces Annie to the house staff, Owusu executes a glorious flying leap while holding…a child’s inflatable pool tube. As they say, no small parts — or, apparently, small props.
These actors all have the benefit of not competing with the iconic Annie performances we hold in our heads. Serena Brook has a tougher challenge as Miss Hannigan, the self-medicating child wrangler at the orphanage, as she has to go up against the likes of Carol Burnett for me, and maybe Kathy Bates or Cameron Diaz or someone equally memorable for you. Yet, from her first stumbling entrance, we know she’s more than up to the task.
Her Miss Hannigan is pitch perfect in a different way than Scharback’s singing: she downs a bottle of bathtub gin, totters her way to the edge of the comedic cliff, then dances there in her drooping beads and raggedy florals, never falling over into the screeching abyss. As her brother Rooster and his new fling Lily St. Regis, who have it out for Annie (and an eye on Warbucks’s reward for finding her parents), Thomas Bevan and Daysha Ramsey could use a smidge of her restraint.
Kangas Erickson should be commended for coaxing sparkling performances out of both the dapper and huddled masses in this Annie, from the servants in Warbucks’s mansion to the grubby residents of a Hooverville. Yet, the most important relationship in this story, between Annie and Oliver Warbucks, is yearning for some breathing room. The pacing in the musical, especially in crucial songs like “Something Was Missing,” when Warbucks admits his swaggering life of a billionaire has been empty without a real, human relationship (someone send tickets to Musk and Bezos), never eases up to allow the actors to find moments of honest connection. Instead of sinking into an earnest emotion, scenes chug into songs, songs chug into scenes and on and on like the actors are hard-wired to a silent metronome.
The fact that Murray feels unsteady as Warbucks, rather than starting as an unmovable block of stone that can be chipped away at, and Scharback is often plopped down in one spot on the stage, instead of given rambunctious choreography to match her interjections of “leapin’ lizards,” doesn’t help.
If you’re interested in hopping on this theatrical Polar Express this season, you may not be buying a ticket for the quiet reflection. If you’re in it for the glorious music, a cast of supremely talented charmers, and the cake and “Chanhattan” at intermission, you won’t disembark disappointed.
Full Transparency: I received a free ticket and dinner for myself and a guest from Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.
Top photo: Dan Norman, courtesy of CDT
Annie
Chanhassen Dinner Theatres
501 West 78th Street
Chanhassen, MN 55317
October 2, 2026 – February 27, 2027
Read more and buy tickets here
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