Review: ANYTHING GOES at Reboot Theater

Cole Porter’s gold standard musical Anything Goes is a blast from the past, but Reboot Theatre’s Anything Goes blasts audiences directly into the future by putting the entire musical in space. Packed with extraordinary talent, inventive stagecraft, and a genuinely fun spirit, this production is jam-packed with many successful, high-fidelity parts. Unfortunately, the decision to put the entire production in a space frame tale muddies the performance more than enhances it. 

Anything Goes is a madcap musical about a stowaway’s attempt to swindle and woo. Young Wall Street broker Billy Crocker (Mackenzie Malhotra) sneaks onto an ocean liner to win the heart of heiress Hope Harcourt (Hannah Votel), only to get tangled in a zany web of disguises, mistaken identities, and romantic mix-ups aboard the ship. Directed by Harry Turpin, Reboot’s Anything Goes frames that tale inside the meta-theater of aliens on a space shuttle putting on a rendition of Anything Goes when the cast that was supposed to put it on does not make it onto the ship. So, an already madcap show, already about mistaken identities and disguises, adds the additional layer of aliens acting in that show. 

Unfortunately, this reinterpretation has too many layers to realistically work. It’s a bit of a hat on a hat on an astronaut’s helmet. Sometimes it wants to parody how aliens might misinterpret a 1930s musical, while other times it feels like a sci-fi Mad Libs. Are the aliens making things up, or perfectly executing a script that’s rife with sci-fi references? Mackenzie Malhotra in some moments is the alien poorly playing Billy Crocker on purpose, other times Malhotra is playing Billy Crocker playing a serial murderer but doing it well. Not to mention there are actors who play multiple characters, which adds more things to keep track of. It also feels like the show abandons the space schtick almost entirely in the second act. 

Amongst the chaos of the show are many moments of buttoned-up dance choreography and clean, gorgeous musical numbers. As the sultry starlet Reno Sweeney, Kat McFadden brings the house down during the titular “Anything Goes” and then destroys the rest of the planet for good measure with “Blow, Gabriel, Blow”. Marnie Wingett’s Erma is cheeky, flirty, and hilarious, her tap number during “The Heavenly Hop” also deserving recognition. The show’s multiple tap numbers, a few of which are ensemble-wide, are worth the price of admission. This is why the convoluted framing of the show is so frustrating, because it tends to distract from the raw talent of this group. 

The rest of the cast also deserves praise. Hannah Votel’s Hope Harcourt and Malhotra’s Billy Crocker are genuinely sweet as the central couple, and their rendition of “It’s De-Lovely” was catchy and tender. As second-rate gangster Moonface Martin, Rolando Cardona-Roman is such a little stinker! But his pig-face prosthetic hides half of his face, so audiences cannot see how much his face is emoting. The one role that is able to thread that needle where the space framing succeeds is Samuel Pettit’s Evelyn Oakley. His character is unaware of Reno’s romantic advances, but rather than being dim-witted, he’s like Spock, so he’s incapable of understanding or experiencing human emotion. Pettit is also excellently consistent in his deadpan tone, and it’s quite funny. When Anything Goes lets the singing and dancing be the focus, rather than the cleverness of the sci-fi meta-context, the confusion melts away. These are the moments that remind you what a talented company Reboot has assembled. 

The band (Sam Peters, Olivia Pedroza, Cody Clark, and Andrew Brooke), plays fantastically throughout. The live music gives the production a fullness that grounds even its most absurd moments. There is a stellar clarinet solo that earns its own applause. The drummer even has one of the funnier meta-moments. The retro space shuttle set by looks really cool, replete with a functioning replicator that often becomes a punchline in the musical numbers.

This Anything Goes has all the ingredients for a great time: a terrific ensemble, excellent live music, and some truly impressive design. And putting Anything Goes in space is a great idea–the musical takes place on a ship, so putting the show on a space ship makes sense. The problem was the “metafication” made it too confusing. That said, no amount of layers of irony and sci-fi references can hide the talent of this bunch. Reboot Theatre continues to prove it can assemble some of Seattle’s best performers and most inventive designers, even when the material asks them to reach for the stars.

Grade: B-

Seattle Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. THE COLOR PURPLE (Village Theatre)

7.6% of votes

2. REEFER MADNESS (The Spartan Theatre)

7% of votes

3. JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT (Spokane Valley Summer Theatre)

6.5% of votes

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