Anything Goes

Anything Goes (1934), a musical comedy by Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse (book), Cole Porter (music, lyrics). [Alvin Theatre, 420 perf.] Reno Sweeney ( Ethel Merman), an evangelist turned nightclub singer, gets such a kick out of Billy Crocker ( William Gaxton) that she boards a Europe‐bound liner to dissuade him from pursuing Hope Harcourt ( Bettina Hall). Although Billy pines for Hope, she is determined to marry an English peer, so Billy, who stowed away on the ship, is forced to adopt a number of disguises. Also aboard is a wistful little man, the Reverend Dr. Moon ( Victor Moore), whom J. Edgar Hoover has branded “Public Enemy 13.” Moon's ambition is to rise to the top of Hoover's list. On landing, Hope discovers she has become an heiress, so she drops her Englishman and consents to marry Billy. The Englishman turns his attention to Reno, while Moon, learning he has been judged harmless and dropped from the FBI list, walks away muttering nasty things about Hoover. Notable songs: All Through the Night; Anything Goes; Blow, Gabriel, Blow; I Get a Kick Out of You; You're the Top. Praised by Brooks Atkinson as “a thundering good song and dance show,” with time this work came to be perceived as the quintessential American musical of the 1930s: brassy, lighthearted, contemporary, and more or less topical. Porter's score was considered his best before Kiss Me, Kate (1948). A disaster almost scuttled the show: Bolton and Wodehouse's original libretto dealt with a shipwreck, but just before the musical went into rehearsal, the Morro Castle sank with a huge loss of life. Bolton and Wodehouse were out of the country, so producer Vinton Freedley enlisted Lindsay and Crouse to write a new story, thus initiating one of Broadway's more successful partnerships. There have been two rewritten but popular revivals of Anything Goes in Manhattan: an Off‐Broadway production in 1962 featuring Eileen Rodgers and Hal Linden and a lively 1987 version with Patti LuPone and Howard McGillin.