Nope two different shows with the same creative team. Annie Warbucks is a Heavily reworking of Annie 2 though, The plot is slightly different but having the same premise of Warbucks finding a new wife. Annie 2 has an entirely different score it does have some highlights but feels incomplete at times, and the new characters seemed weaker than the ones written for Annie Warbucks. I found Annie Warbucks to be the better show.
In Annie 2, Warbucks proposes to Grace at the end, which you knew he was going to do all along (I don't know Annie Warbucks).
Annie 2 is a really weird show - it feels like it should work, but the laughs all fall flat, and Miss Hannigan is a truly awful creepy presence in it. Which may explain why Dorothy Loudon more or less sabotaged the DC production - she said that she hated doing that show.
Warbucks and Grace marry in the final scene of Annie Warbucks.
For Annie Warbucks they decided to cut Hannigan and add the chracter of Commissioner Doyle, who I thought wasas very similar. she comes in to the plot to report to Warbucks, that he's unfit for Annie's father because he's not married. The plot involves Warbucks on a wife search, Annie running away, and Grace taking a job in Washington, while 3 crooks try to steal warbuck's fourtune. In the end Warbucks and Grace realize they were always in love so they decide to get married.
I saw Annie Warbucks at the Pantages in L.A. in 1992. The cast was fine (led by Harve Presnell), but only one song (a group number with the orphans) was any good. A real show-stopper. Other than that, the story and score were pretty forgettable.
I am very unfamiliar with ANNIE. I have seen half the movie and saw my 12 year old niece in a children's theater production of it. (My niece was an ensemble orphan, so it really wasn't worth going for her. She had no lines, only a bit of dancing and group singing.)
The TV movie with Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Audra Mcdonald, Alan Cumming, and Cheno, I believe, is a truer-to-the-musical version than the Carol Burnett movie. Although I do love me some Tim Curry.
Except the Garber version adds the slightly odd bi-racial romance between Warbucks and Grace (played by a rather ungraceful Audra McDonald). And the story line departs in other places as well. But it is better than that awful movie.
Two songs that made it from Annie 2 into Annie Warbucks are interesting: "A Younger Man" is a classic Strouse ballad for Warbucks and very pretty; "But You Go On" is a strange, unfunny, hyper-pathetic gut-bucket number written for the woman auditioning to be Mrs. Warbucks (Miss Hannigan in the first show). It's a good song in and of itself, but completely at odds with the cartoon-y show.
The Annie Warbucks score has some real gems. A few numbers from the '93 LA run are available on Youtube and worth checking out (Above The Law, and Love). The Act 1 closer (I Got Me) and the orphans big number (The Other Woman) are great too. You can view Lindsay Mendez sing But You Go On here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abjt2Ozur0o A very haunting song.
Annie 2 - Miss Hannigan's Revenge is a pretty dreadful show. I have only seen a bootleg DVD from Washington but it was painful to get through. It did not seem to have any reason to exist and Hannigan was such a vile character to Annie in and i never really understood why.
Did they not do a nationwide talent search to find the new Annie for Annie 2 and then the show closed out of town and never made it to Broadway?
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joined:3/3/08
Posted: 7/10/12 at 08:20pm