A cast of 43 performers accompanied by a 35-piece orchestra will present the Tony Award-winning romantic musical comedy “Anything Goes” April 21-23 at Oklahoma City University’s Bass School of Music.
Cole Porter’s madcap musical — set on a Jazz Age cruise ship populated by tap-dancing sailors and old-fashioned hijinks — is anchored by favorite Broadway songs such as “Anything Goes,” “It’s De-lovely,” “You're the Top” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
“Anything Goes” will be presented by OKCU’s award-winning Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company as the grand finale of its 65th consecutive season. Three performances will be staged in Kirkpatrick Auditorium at N.W. 24th Street and Blackwelder Avenue: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with a 3 p.m. Sunday matinee. Tickets ($14-28) are available online at okcu.edu/tickets or by calling 405-208-5227.
A free curtain talk with director David Herendeen will be held 45 minutes before each performance. A themed opening-night dinner (reservations $25) will be held Friday, April 21, in the atrium of the Bass Music Center.
“This is Cole Porter at his finest,” Herendeen said. “The show takes place on a steamy steamer populated by fallen angels, celebrity-crazed passengers, star-crossed lovers, inept gangsters and a proselytizing nightclub singer. The entendres are beyond double in this tappy, happy, clever and crazy show!”
With original music and lyrics by Cole Porter, and a book by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, the show’s setting was inspired by producer Vinton Freedley, who hid from creditors by living on a fishing boat.
“Anything Goes” inspired a 1936 film, starring Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman, and won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical in 1987 and 2011. The Hollywood Reporter noted: “Vintage Broadway musicals were about pure pleasure, and this one delivers a boatload of it…the show is so packed with daffy physical shtick, comical dialogue and those still dazzlingly clever Cole Porter lyrics that it’s impossible not to surrender.”
