Annie

Little Annie the red headed orphan girl. 

 Annie is the story of a young girl who was left on the steps of the New York Girls orphanage by her parents when she was a baby, leaving her with a locket and a note. Set in the midst of the Great Depression, Annie (Chloe Theil) and the other orphan girls are forced to spend their days scrubbing, washing and sowing. Annie constantly tries to escape the orphanage and the bitter spinster, Miss Hannigan (Nancye Hayes) in charge of the place in order to search for her parents only to be brought back each time. Grace Farrell (Julie Goodwin), secretary to the billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Anthony Warlow), comes to the orpanage as Mr Warbucks has requested an orphan to spend the Christmas holidays at his home. Farrell chooses Annie to the disgust of Miss Hannigan. Warbucks and Annie turn into unlikely friends and so ensues a search for Annie's parents with Roosevelt and J. Edgar and generally just a lot of fun.
Now I might not have ever seen a production of Annie before, live or the movie, but this one was brilliant and had me enraptured. Many people might think "oh no, little children singing and dancing for a whole two hours, how can that be enjoyable?" But it really was. The entire child cast did really well. For young children, I was amazed. Annie (Chole Theil) had a great voice and her performance was really enjoyable.
The orphans did a great job, there was some over-acting but on a whole you couldn't ask for more from young kids, especially for their first professional performance.
Todd McKenney owned the stage. He is a natural and really good in the role of Rooster (Miss Hannigan's brother). Easy Street is such a good song. Anthony Warlow also shines and you can really see why he has had such an amazing career. Also a highlight was Julie Goodwin as Grace. She is relatively new to the musical world but steadily making herself known. She has an amazing voice that shines through the ensemble.
The only real let down was Alan Jones as F.D.R. He may be good at sport and good at talking on the radio but in a musical. I don't really know why he is in this production. He can't hold down the accent and accents can be hard but when all the little 11-year-old kids can do it...And his singing is anything to boast about. I think they could have found someone else for this role. He let the production down a bit, especially when he is playing such an iconic role, usch an iconic figure.
This is just a very fun and very cute musical. I loved it.
One thing that I do love about QPAC is the fact that each time they have a musical playing there, they change the colours of the light that light it up at night. It's brilliant. When Wicked was here, they had it lit up all green and now for Annie it's all red. It makes it that much more exciting.