THEATER REVIEW : Dressed-Up ‘Annie’ Is a Holiday Charmer

For a family show gift-wrapped for Christmas, it’s hard to top the musical charmer “Annie,” eye-poppingly staged by the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities.

Based on the classic Harold Gray comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” the enduring favorite is not a comic-strip musical but a musical that happens to be inspired by a comic strip.

Annie (the perfectly cast, 12-year-old “Annie” veteran Candice Oden) is the plucky spirit in all of us, wearing down cynicism and pessimism with unbridled hope in the Depression year of 1933.

A big part of the production’s appeal is in the lavishly designed sets, notably the ragged Hooverville inhabited by that era’s homeless and an orphanage straight out of Dickens.

The familiar characters include the bald, blustery capitalist Daddy Warbucks (the on-target Jack Ritschel) and a grinning Franklin Delano Roosevelt, spinning around in his wheelchair (the amazing FDR-look-alike Tom Hatten, whom TV viewers may remember as the longtime host of the afternoon “Popeye” cartoon show on KTLA Channel 5).

A highlight is Oden’s Annie singing the soaring “Tomorrow,” one of the show’s most memorable songs from lyricist Martin Charnin and composer Charles Strouse. The hefty pit orchestra is led by Dennis Castellano.

The cast is vibrantly animated, with the exception of one mellow member: Sandy, Annie’s loyal dog. Sandy (Tootsie, in real life) was last seen snuffling around the stage in last season’s “Annie” in the Downey Civic Light Opera production. Talk about a working dog.

Among other pleasures is the agile Timothy Smith’s conniving Rooster, who tries to pass himself off as Annie’s long-lost father. Smith is a tall, wiry actor, and his body-contorting rooster impression is a hoot, straight out of slip n’ slide old-time vaudeville.

Kathleen Freeman’s hellish orphanage matron is a blowzy, gin-sipping monster who wakes her little charges to mop the floors at 4 in the morning.

The dancing ensemble of those little ragamuffins is rousingly choreographed by the show’s astute director, Craig Schaefer, and Patti Mariano.

A matinee performance last weekend filled the 1,424-seat Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center with an audience that appeared to be half children.

The comparatively young Civic Light Opera company, concluding its third year at the center, is doing something professionally right. Just a few hundred patrons short of a healthy 10,000 subscribers, the organization has brought new luster to the South Bay theater scene.

Next June, the company will attempt what few civic light operas seldom dare to do: gamble on the world premiere of an untested musical (“Western Star,” written by Dale Wasserman of “Man of La Mancha” fame and set in the American West).

Wasserman is using South Bay as a way-out-of-town Broadway tryout venue, but it’s a refreshing wrinkle in the South Bay Civic Light Opera’s programming. The three remaining South Bay shows scheduled for next year are standard fare: “42nd Street,” “Phantom” and “The Sound of Music.”

* “Annie,” Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities, Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, Manhattan Beach and Aviation boulevards, Redondo Beach; 8 tonight through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 7 p.m. Sunday; tickets $20 to $35. Ends Sunday. (310) 372-4477. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.