THEATER : Sun Is Shining Today for Adrienne Stiefel’s Annie

Adrienne Stiefel was just another number when she tried out for “Annie” two months ago in Pasadena along with 101 other girls.

“I was No. 59,” she recalls, sitting on a sofa in her home here with a pile of schoolbooks at her feet.

It had been a one-day cattle call to cast all the children’s roles for the California Music Theatre revival of the 1977 Tony Award-winning musical. “Annie” opens tonight for eight performances through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Adrienne Stiefel--it rhymes with steeple-- could tell that her audition was going well. After she sang “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” an upbeat tune from the Broadway show “Sweet Charity,” she was asked to do “Tomorrow,” Annie’s signature song.

“It was very interesting,” says the slight 13-year-old. “The kids waiting outside started to clap. They were clapping for me , and they were my competition! It was very nice of them.”

Producer-director Gary Davis, who knew from Adrienne’s resume that she had done the title role before, checked her height (4-foot-11). “ ‘It looks like you have one more Annie in you,’ ” he said. Describing that moment, Adrienne recalls: “I just stood there and glowed. He didn’t say I had the part. But you could guess.”

Everybody knows that the star of virtually any “Annie” revival is chosen for her ability to approximate the sound of Andrea McArdle, who originated the title role on Broadway. But nobody knows that better than Adrienne’s mother, Linda.

“Acting is kind of a non-issue,” she says, “and most Annies, when they’re not singing, get through the show like little automatons.” That is why when “Annie” ran earlier this month at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, she appreciated the reviews that touched on her daughter’s acting.

Not that the voice went unnoticed. “Her singing is lovely,” said Drama-Logue. “A winning voice,” said The Hollywood Reporter. “A powerful voice,” said Daily Variety. “The audience knows it’s in capable hands the minute Stiefel belts out (her) dreamland paean,” said the Los Angeles Daily News.

If you ask Orange County’s youngest stage star when she first knew she had no ordinary voice, a thoughtful smile comes over her face and dimples appear in both of her cheeks. “I didn’t really know,” she says. “I thought I sang like every kid did.”

Pressed not to be too modest, she turns pensive and takes a sip from a glass of soda her mother has brought from the kitchen.

“I guess I found out at my school talent show when I was 5,” she finally admits. “It was at the end of a song. I was singing quietly at the beginning, but at the end I was really loud. I heard this voice go whoosh --and it was me. The man who introduced the show said I was ‘a little person with a big voice.’ ”

Adrienne, now an eighth-grader at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, has been impressing people ever since.

In a separate interview, Diane Doyle, who heads South Coast Repertory’s Young Conservatory, where Adrienne took acting classes, says: “She can do ‘Annie’ blindfolded. She has all the tools. She’s very natural. She has tons of experience. And she doesn’t have attitude .”

Maurice Allard, her voice coach for the past two years, agrees: “Basically, she’s a high soprano with this wonderfully rich chest register that allows her to sing in her ‘belt voice,’ where ‘Annie’ is written. She also has a wonderful feeling for re-creating a song and a marvelous sense of communication. She’s been touched by the gods.”

The gods aside, she certainly has been tapped by casting directors. At 9, she played the title role of “Oliver!” at Cal State Long Beach for the Greater Los Angeles Children’s Theatre. At 10, she got her first professional job in “A Traditional Christmas” at Griswold’s Candlelight Pavilion and the same year followed up with “The Sound of Music” at the Elizabeth Howard Curtain Call Theater.

Besides doing “Annie” twice before--at the Glendale Theatre Center and the La Mirada Civic Theatre--Adrienne appeared last March as a soloist at the Performing Arts Center with Shirley Jones and the Master Chorale of Orange County in “Your Ticket to Broadway.” Last week, moreover, she had her third callback for Alice in Disney’s TV pilot of “Adventures in Wonderland,” a musical version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Unlike Annie, the 11-year-old foundling in the Municipal Orphanage, Adrienne never had to contend with a life of deprivation or with the persecutions of someone as mean as Miss Hannigan, the orphanage matron. Quite the contrary. This busy prodigy has grown up in affluent surroundings.

Born in Newport Beach, she has lived for the past six years in a huge house that her parents designed and had custom-built. Overlooking a cul-de-sac, it’s something like the Connecticut manor in “Bringing Up Baby,” only grander. A grand piano stands in the foyer. The sunken den has a large fireplace. A stately Christmas tree dominates the living room. And oil paintings by Frank Stiefel, the wunderkind’s father, hang in many of the rooms.

Does Adrienne have any idea where she gets her talent? “My dad says I get it from him,” she replies. “He says he taught me everything I know.”

In fact, musical ability does run in the family. Both of her parents are amateur singers. Her father, a real estate lawyer by profession, also plays the piano by ear. And, she says, her 16-year-old brother, Valjean, “is a really good singer and has great pitch.”

But Adrienne posseses the one thing that none of the others do: She thrives on audiences and lives to perform. “It’s a mystery to the rest of us where she got that,” says her mother. “I hate to perform. Her father can’t do it either. And her brother has no interest in it.”

Much less of a mystery, however, is where the “Annie” star got her red hair. “I got it from the hair lady,” she says. “My friends think it’s weird. When I first got it, it was really bright. It glowed. I had this big red fluorescent halo. People kept saying: ‘Your hair!’ ”

In the future, if Adrienne’s career keeps up its torrid pace, they’re more likely to be saying: “I knew her when . . . .”