$7-Million ‘Annie’ Sequel Orphaned On the Road

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow, you’re only a day away.”

That’s the chorus that charmed audiences left the original version of the musical “Annie” singing for the seven years the hit show played on Broadway.

But now the producers of the $7-million sequel to that successful show, “Annie 2,” are praying that there will be a tomorrow someday for the production that closes its Washington D.C., run Saturday in the wake of negative reviews and an equally negative response from the public.

The producers have announced that “Annie 2” will not be coming to Broadway to begin previews Feb. 5 and open on March 1 as planned. Instead they said they plan to bring a revival of the original Tony Award-winning musical which opened on Broadway on April 21, 1977 and ran for 2,377 performances until it closed on Jan 1, 1983.

The show’s spokesman, David Powers, said here that director Martin Charnin expects to use much of the same cast in the revival that he used in “Annie 2,” as well as the same scenery and costumes. “Annie 2” features Dorothy Loudon as Miss Hannigan, Harve Presnell in the role of Daddy Warbucks and 11-year-old Danielle Findley in the title role.

As for “Annie 2,” that sequel which will have 36 performances before its Washington run ends Saturday, will be presented in a revised version sometime over the summer at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., where “Annie” originated in 1976.

“Annie 2” features a score by Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse and a book by Thomas Meehan, the same team that mounted the original show, but as soon as the critics saw the sequel, the production at the Opera House at Washington’s Kennedy Center, appeared to be in trouble.

Washington Post theater critic, David Richards, wrote that “ ‘Annie’ was a musical to take to your heart but you’ll want to take a paddle to ‘Annie 2’.” Richards called the plot “preposterous” and the score “dull” even after seeing a streamlined version which had shed 30 minutes from what had been a three-and-a-half-hour running time.

Over the weekend, as co-producers Roger S. Berlind and Lewis Allen met around the clock, calculating how the show could be transformed in Washington, Berlind declined to discuss the production’s problems.

Playwright and Dramatists Guild president Peter Stone, a Broadway veteran, also chose not to give his opinions on the musical’s flaws, but Stone did say that “Annie 2” producers had asked him, director Tommy Tune and director/producer Mike Nichols to see the show and offer their advice.

Stone said the three had gone to Washington “as friends” of the “Annie 2” team and that they had discussed the production, but he said none of them would be involved in creating a new version of the sequel. Stone said any opinion he might offer publicly would only add to the misfortune of the show’s producers who he said were “fighting for their lives.”

“Annie 2’s” producers are quick to point out that the original “Annie” did not become a hit without its own struggle for survival. That show almost closed at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1976, but it was turned around by Mike Nichols, who signed on as a producer at Martin Charnin’s invitation. Nichols helped oversee changes in the book, characters, sets and choreography as well as the addition of several songs.

The highly advertised and now orphaned “Annie 2,” which had accumulated $3.6 million in advance sales, had forced the successful musical “Me and My Girl” out of the Marquis Theater on Broadway. That show closed on Jan. 1 to make way for the sequel.

The show’s producers were reportedly considering the Marquis as an ideal location for the revival of “Annie,” but the Nederlander Organization, which owns the theater, is said to have sensed that the sequel’s abrupt closing might well haunt the revival and rejected that maneuver. Nederlander has insisted that the lease at the Marquis was for “Annie 2,” not for “Annie.”

A press spokesman of the show said that the lease is still under negotiation. If an agreement is reached to put the revival of “Annie” in the Marquis, the spokesman said, rehearsals for the revival could begin as soon as Feb. 5, the day “Annie 2” was to start its New York previews.

The spokesman for “Annie 2” also confirmed reports that co-producer Berlind had offered to return 25%-30% of the production’s costs to its investors in the hope that the investors would then put that money into the revival of “Annie.”