A New Tomorrow for ‘Annie’ : ‘Warbucks’ re-emphasizes innocence and sentimentality from a child’s point of view after a disastrous first sequel

When the Kaufman-Hart comedy “Once in a Lifetime” opened in Philadelphia in the early ‘30s, it didn’t work. During the run George S. Kaufman decided to delete an $80,000 nightclub scene. Suddenly the laughs--and the hit play--were there.

When “Annie 2,” the first sequel to the smash hit “Annie,” opened in Washington, D.C., it didn’t work either. Audiences and critics didn’t like what they saw. The show’s creators had to perform more drastic surgery. The only solution was to jettison the whole thing and start over from Square One.

The result, “Annie Warbucks,” a completely new sequel, opens its pre-Broadway Los Angeles run at the Pantages Theatre on Tuesday, after revisions and additions during a national tour culminating in San Diego just prior to this week’s opening.

“Annie Warbucks” also provides a lesson in how to turn failure into success and, like the little girl in the red dress, how to keep looking for the silver lining.

The collaborators, author Thomas Meehan, composer Charles Strouse and lyricist-director Martin Charnin, look back with relief that the abortive “Annie 2” and the years of reworking the property are finally in the past. Their efforts are a map of the stormy voyage between inspiration and curtain calls.

After the demise of their first effort at continuing the saga of Annie, Daddy Warbucks and Sandy, the trio of good friends had a number of analogies for their trauma, their favorite being to a voyage on the Titanic.

“We struck an iceberg,” says Meehan, “but we didn’t sink. We took the Titanic back to England, refitted it, and we’re trying to sail it across the ocean again, with the dream that we’ll come into New York Harbor with all flags flying, and horns tooting, and make it.”

Meehan, who began his career as a New Yorker magazine satirist, has been a five-time Emmy nominee for his work on television, including specials for Bill Cosby and Dick Cavett, co-wrote screenplays for Mel Brooks’ “To Be or Not to Be” and “Spaceballs,” and wrote the book for Richard Rodgers’ last Broadway show, “I Remember Mama.” He won a 1977 Tony Award for “Annie.”

Meehan and Strouse were not particularly excited about doing a sequel to their original hit, but finally decided to forge ahead. Many ideas ran past the trio, even, Meehan admits, one in which Warbucks goes broke and he and Annie travel around with a carnival. Finally they decided to forget about Annie and focus on Miss Hannigan, the villain of “Annie.” It would be different, adult and funny.

“Boy, was that a mistake,” Meehan admits. “In Washington we began to see what we’d done wrong. They were not interested in Miss Hannigan. Where was Annie, where were the orphans, where was the whole spirit, the optimism of ‘Annie’?”

“The mistake we are correcting,” says Charnin, “is that ‘Annie 2’ was told from Miss Hannigan’s point of view. ‘Annie Warbucks’ is told from the child’s point of view. Its innocence and its simplicity are its great strength. We had abandoned what the truth and the reality of this musical are. As cynically as an audience may publicly be, privately it’s those things you send your children to sleep with at night.”

Charnin was in the original production of “West Side Story” on Broadway, and has been involved as writer or director with shows such as “Zenda,” “La Strada,” “I Remember Mama” and “The No-Frills Revue.” He has received a Tony, two Grammys and a Peabody Award.

Strouse, composer of such Broadway hits as “Bye, Bye Birdie” and “Applause,” numbers among his film scores “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Night They Raided Minsky’s.”

“We started out in Washington by mocking the sentiment,” Strouse says. “We came back to the sentiment, but now, what we’re doing is making the sentiment adult and real.”

All three were involved in other projects after the original “Annie” and the abortive “Annie 2.” Then, four years ago they took what they’d learned and began anew, with a new story line that begins the moment the first musical ends.

Although Annie has found her new father, Warbucks, the 1934 New York laws prohibit a bachelor from adopting a child. Warbucks is given 60 days to marry--and provide a mother for the lovable Annie. The shows could be played end-to-end and called “The Annie Cycle,” or maybe “Annie in America.”

The story Meehan has concocted for the new sequel has a slightly harder edge than the first installment. Strouse says it resonates for today. “It’s all about being a single parent. It’s about women’s rights in a funny kind of way. And we touch on racial issues.”

The story takes place in the rural South during the Great Depression. That also resonates today, Charnin adds, “because it’s a similar depression to an extent to the one we’re in.”

“It’s all about government spending,” Strouse says.

The ideas that flavor the new script, and whirl around Annie and her search for happiness, Charnin says, are “now a headline issue every time we pick up a newspaper.”

At the suggestion that Annie is sort of female Oliver Twist, another theatrical legend, Charnin smiles. “ ‘Oliver,’ ” he says, “invented the little boy business as far as theater is concerned, and ‘Annie’ invented the little girl business.”

“When the red dress is on the stage,” Meehan says with a chuckle, recalling the lessons of “Annie 2,” “the audience becomes interested. When the red dress is on the stage, we’re in business.”

“Annie Warbucks” opens Tuesday at the Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, and plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 22. Tickets: $20.50-$40. (213) 480-3232.