CTC's Annie is the greatest show ever. Just ask my daughter.

I mostly don't enjoy theater, either. On June 10th Minnesota Playlist ran a piece by Kevin Houle called Poorly Attended wherein he apologized for not going to see as much theater as he thinks he probably should. He explained that it’s hard for him to turn off his creating and directing brain and just enjoy a show. Kevin’s explanation of why he isn’t constantly going to shows really resonated with me. I’ve been a comedy writer and performer for over a decade and a consumer of all forms of comedy since the first time I saw Stan and Ollie try to get a piano up a flight of stairs. I’m happy to wear the label of comedy nerd and even comedy snob. And I’ve been lucky enough to see a handful of tremendous live stand-up, improv, and theatrical comedy performances in the Twin Cities But most of the comedy I’ve seen live on stage has been mediocre to terrible. And by most I mean 99%. I’m not trying to be mean when I say mediocre to terrible (mean just comes naturally) because I’m talking about the thing I most love and respect. Let me also be the first, well, maybe not the first, to say that the vast majority of what I’ve done on stage falls into that mediocre to terrible spectrum. My standards and expectations are high. I’ve seen comedy done as well as it possibly could be and I care so much about the art of comedy that seeing anything short of the best makes me angry and uncomfortable. And that’s why I don’t go see nearly as many shows as I would like. Because if anything funny is supposed to happen in a show it mostly makes me angry and uncomfortable. However, something changed for me a few years ago that opened up live theater to me in an entirely new way. I tricked a woman into marrying me and then we made a person. An actual human person! I know, pretty impressive, right? Tonight I took my five-year-old daughter to see The Children’s Theatre Company’s production of Annie. For those of you who don’t own or know a five-year-old they do not have irony or cynicism. The things they like are the greatest things in the world and the things they dislike are monumental tragedies unparalleled by any of the worlds suffering. My daughter wore to tonight’s performance a little red Annie dress. And I don’t mean it was just a red dress. She wore an actual Annie dress designed to be a Halloween costume. Because she loves Annie. She loves the movie Annie, she loves the story of Annie, and she absolutely love the little red haired orphan no matter who is portraying her. It was no surprise that there were some really fun performances in the show. The sets were great, the costumes were just right, and the child actors in the show not only sang and danced wonderfully but also moved and cleared sets between scenes. The CTC has established a high level of quality with their shows and they tend to maintain it. At least that’s what I’ve witnessed in my decent and growing experience. But none of those show elements really matter. Not to the real audience tonight. Not to my daughter. They could have had a bare gray wall, no sets, no amplified sound, and no costumes (except maybe the red dress) and it wouldn’t have mattered. Every actor could have flubbed a line and the dog could have taken a dump on stage and it wouldn’t have mattered. They were singing the songs and telling the story that this little girl loves, magically making the story come to life on stage and it was sincerely the most wonderful and amazing play she has ever seen. Sitting next to this little person dressed in a costume from the show watching her entire body engage with actors on a stage telling a story I could find fault with any number of elements of the production. I could find faults with the story itself. But I’d be wrong. It was magical. It was amazing. People were pretending to be someone else and an entire audience of families agreed to go along with it. That is amazing and should always be amazing. And I get to see it as amazing because of the company I keep.