Annie – The Alexandra, Birmingham

Book: Thomas Meehan

Music: Charles Strouse

Lyrics: Martin Charnin

Director: Nikolai Foster

Annie has been a fixture of musical theatre since Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin’s score first reached Broadway in 1977. This production, directed by Nikolai Foster and produced by Michael Harrison and David Ian, has toured the UK repeatedly since its opening in Newcastle in 2015, taken in a West End run at the Piccadilly Theatre in 2017, and shows no signs of diminishing appeal. The story – plucky Depression-era orphan finds improbable route out of poverty via billionaire benefactor, outsmarting scheming orphanage keeper along the way – is so deeply embedded in the cultural imagination that it barely needs introduction. What matters is how it’s told, and for the most part, this telling is very good indeed.

Colin Richmond’s set design is striking. Less fussy than one might expect, it resists the temptation to fill the stage with a grand Warbucks mansion and instead offers a flown-in elaborate doorway, a desk wheeled on and off, and a clean scenic vocabulary built around flying, trucks and the cast moving pieces with striking slickness. Nick Winston’s choreography echoes that feel throughout, catching the music’s shifts from Depression-era grit to full-blown Broadway razzamatazz with precision.

That score is presented to particularly fine effect by orchestrator and musical supervisor George Dyer. One of the quietly indispensable figures in musical theatre, Dyer’s arrangements have a nod to the 1930s setting while leaning into the glitzy energy the show demands. The result suits the score well, whether in the comic menace of Easy Street, the sardonic pleasures of Little Girls, or the lush ballads that surround Warbucks.

The casting of La Voix as Miss Hannigan is interesting. Known to television audiences through RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and Strictly Come Dancing, she has genuine vocal power to the production, with a showstopping voice that has far more to offer than the score actually asks of Hannigan, a part traditionally cast for comic rather than musical firepower. There’s an odd constraint that results – La Voix has comic skills in abundance, but the script gives her limited room to deploy them on her own terms, and you find yourself wishing the role were written to make more of what she can do. Notwithstanding that, it’s an entertaining performance, enjoyable to watch.

Alex Bourne, returning to the role of Oliver Warbucks after previous outings in this production, brings the considerable experience and vocal authority the part needs. The show doesn’t offer a traditional leading man’s range of numbers, but he makes the most of what he has. The relationship between Warbucks and Annie, however, lacks a little of the warmth and deepening chemistry that gives the second half a lot of its emotional weight – a slight gap at its heart that the production doesn’t quite fill.

Where it does find its heart is in Tanisha-Mae Brown as Grace Farrell, a role that can drift into the background in lesser productions. Brown commands the stage whenever she’s on it, her voice strong and assured, and she brings a genuine presence to a part that often functions merely as plot mechanism.

It is, ultimately, a show about its children – and specifically its Annie. At press night Sophia Saravanan took the role, and she’s a young performer of real promise: big stage presence, a well-developed voice, and an instinctive ease with the material that belies her years. She’s also required to share her scenes with Sandy – played here by Dizzy – who proves predictably adept at stealing the scene, particularly during Tomorrow, where Annie’s pocket full of treats proves rather more compelling to the dog than the song does. It’s an endearing, if unplanned, piece of stage business that the audience takes to immediately. The role alternates with Victoria Alsina and June Young across the run, with three teams of young performers sharing the orphanage scenes throughout. The production gives each of them something genuine to do, and they rise to it.

Annie is an enduring piece of musical theatre and this is a production that’s well worth catching.

Runs until 6 June 2026 and on tour