STAGE REVIEW : Costumes De-Best In ‘Anything Goes’

Some things go better than others in the nautical production of Cole Porter’s 1934 musical comedy, “Anything Goes,” now at the Huntington Beach Playhouse with a large cast of amateur performers working their hearts out to keep the ship afloat.

What goes best are the splashy Art Deco period costumes. If they truly are the creations of director Larry Watts--and there’s no reason to doubt that they are, since he is credited in the playbill as both designer and costumer--then some professional producer ought to drop in and offer him a contract that pays real money.

His costumes have dash and sophistication, particularly the way they drape the long-stemmed body of the imperial Pat Boldt, who plays nightclub singer Reno Sweeney, the ostensible star of the show. And they not only look like a million bucks, they just keep coming. After a half-dozen of Boldt’s stellar costume changes, each one tastier than the next, I stopped counting.

Unfortunately, Watts has less success with his broad vaudevillian staging of this admittedly nonsensical shipboard farce about mismatched lovers on a trans-Atlantic liner. The show moves along in fits and starts, lurching through an interminable first act despite such unimpeachably jaunty tunes as “You’re the Top,” “It’s De-lovely” and “Anything Goes.” In the second act the pace picks up, but the talent doesn’t.

You don’t have to be Ethel Merman to portray Reno Sweeney, as in the Broadway original, but it helps to be a brassy singer capable of belting and crooning. The tall, auburn-haired Boldt, who bears a certain resemblance to Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford, has a natural way with dialogue, but she can’t do much more than carry a tune. Forget crooning. Boldt’s sultry torch song in the first act, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” congeals like cold pudding. And forget belting. During the second-act showstopper, “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” she can hardly be heard above the company.

It would be unfair, however, to single out Boldt’s weak vocal performance for the show’s frequently rocky passage. Adriana Sanchez sings well enough as the ingenue, Hope Harcourt, for example, but she can’t deliver a line of dialogue without sounding unnaturally stiff. Now if Boldt and Sanches could combine their talents . . . .

Jim Goodrich comfortably manages both the singing and the acting as Billy Crocker, the young stockbroker who stows away on the liner in pursuit of Hope, who is sailing for England with her fiance. Goodrich has a pleasant, light baritone that is always on-key. He energizes the production with his musicality. And he brings an antic mood to Billy’s shenanigans.

Meanwhile, Larry Blake turns in the evening’s most genuinely entertaining comic portrait with his burlesque of an upper-class British twit, Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, Hope’s fiance. And Gregory Cohen has his moments doing plenty of shtick in clerical disguise as Moonface Martin, Public Enemy No. 13.

The rest of the company--led by Kysa Cohen as Moonface’s roving moll, Bonnie, and featuring Reno’s four angelic chorines--occasionally fills out the stage with tap-dance numbers between long stretches of amiably hokey plot.

The production also has a cruise-themed, pre-show cabaret in the lobby of the theater. Players in costume mingle with the crowd, as though the audience were passengers coming aboard ship. It’s an endearing touch.

‘Anything Goes’

Jeannette Antongiorgi: Ching

Zarah Antongiorgi: Ling

Larry Blake: Sir Evelyn Oakleigh

Pat Boldt: Reno Sweeney

Gregory Cohen: Moonface Martin

Kysa Cohen: Bonnie

Tauri Cornell: Reporter

Jim Goodrich: Billy Crocker

Brandon Ibanez: Purser/Steward

Gordon Marhoefer: Bishop/Captain

Karen McCord: Virtue

Ariel Mekler: Purity

Mary Ann Osness: Mrs. W.T. Harcourt

William Ripper: Elisha J. Whitney

Adriana Sanchez: Hope Harcourt

Paul Smith: Cameraman/Sailor

Kristine Willson: Charity

A Huntington Beach Playhouse presentation of the musical comedy written by Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Directed by Larry Watts. Produced by Bill Verhaegen and Ken Walker. Musical direction by Kysa Cohen. Choreography by Tracy Halbmaier. Set design by Watts. Lighting design by Martin G. Eckmann. Costume design by Watts. Through Nov. 22 at the Huntington Beach Playhouse, 21141 Strathmoor Lane (in the Gisler Middle School), Huntington Beach. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; matinees Oct. 25, Nov. 8 and 15 at 2 p.m. $9 to $10. (714) 832-1405.