BWW Blog: Andrea McArdle - ANNIE Vault Pics!

Howdy gang, can't believe the month is coming to an end already, time flies when you're having fun blogging.

I have had a few people write to me saying how much they liked the "vault pics" and if I could share some more from the "red album" years, haha!

My adventures during our original run of Annie were pretty fantastic, the memories of performing the show, meeting all the stars who came to visit, acting alongside Dorothy Loudon, Reid Shelton, causing trouble with all my beautiful fellow orphans, it was pretty heady stuff for a lucky little girl from Philadelphia.

You smart BWW peeps most likely know the early history of the show, when we first premiered in 1976 at the Goodspeed Opera House the show didn't exactly wow them, we had a classic theatre nightmare of an opening night, a hurricane struck, the electricity went out, the set was falling down all over the place, I learned the true meaning of "the show must go on" that night! I actually wasn't playing Annie in the early performances; I was Pepper, the feisty and tough orphan. My good buddy fabulous actor/singer Rob Maitner always jokes I'll always be Pepper to him, haha, I really loved playing her too. I wasn't considered for Annie during the castings, I was actually the first kid hired, but I wasn't a redhead. I was on the soap opera "Search for Tomorrow" and I was contracted with long brown hair (which my mother would never let me dye red)! They only were looking for a redhead.

The original actress cast in the title role, Kristen Vigard, was just beautiful, this really sweet and talented young lady, but something didn't quite connect, they needed Annie to be a little rougher, a bit of a tom boy like me, so they stopped looking at the surface for the red hair, and looked for the heart of the role and I got the part. There was also a change in the casting of Miss Hannigan as well, a terrific actress Maggie Task was playing her and was pretty scary and wonderful, but not funny, you need to love to hate Miss Hannigan, but you also have to LOVE her as well. So after our Goodspeed run, with new scenes, new songs, and the magical force of a newly cast Dorothy, we headed into rehearsals for Broadway with fingers crossed...

I hope you all like these photos, I'll be back again to say farewell before the end of the month! xoxo