Annie

★★★★☆     A belter

Edinburgh Playhouse: Tue 15 – Sun 20 Sept 2026
Review by Thom Dibdin

Little orphan Annie comes out belting in a most commanding fashion in Crossroads Live’s touring production of Annie, which is showing off its positivity at the Playhouse through to a Sunday matinee.

June Young, playing the title role on press night, is no tousle-haired sweet thing. She’d fit right in with the Bash Street Kids or, given her accent, with Fagin’s Gang. Although her pugilistic abilities and do-the-right-thing attitude would get her in trouble with both sets of ne’er-do-wells.

Claire Sweeney and the Annie young company. Uncredited pic supplied.

Claire Sweeney might claim top billing as Miss Hannigan, the dreadful mistress of the New York Orphanage in 1930s depression-era America, but Young’s Annie is more than a match. And, as it should be, takes joint star rating for the show.

Sweeney plays Hannigan as more of a lush and a wannabe wanton than the brutalising sadist some have made her; a despot, to be sure, and she can relish the idea of Easy Street, but she’s not the brightest pin in the box at the best if times.

lively co-star hound

It’s clear why 11-year-old Annie wants out – particularly with her upbeat belief that the parents who left a note when they abandoned her as a baby on the orphanage doorstep, are still alive and about to return for her as promised.

Her initial escape is nicely done and Young copes well with her lively co-star hound, the aptly named Dizzy as the escaped dog she names Sandy and takes with her into the Hooverville shanty town on her search for her parents.

N. Y. C.: Tanisha-Mae Brown, Annie and Alex Bourne with the Annie company. Uncredited pic supplied.

Tanisha-Mae Brown is nicely poised and knowing as the PA to billionaire Oliver Warbucks, when she comes to find an orphan to spend Christmas with her employer. While Alex Bourne is the stand-out musical star of the show as Warbucks, bringing a beautiful depth and tone to his singing.

The company seem intent on getting their vocals across with force rather than subtlety. Thanks in part, no doubt, to a rather muddy sound design which, for once in the tricky Playhouse auditorium, at least gets the balance right between the stage and bright orchestra under MD Nick Tudor.

cuts the menace

Least-well served by the muddiness of tone are Christian Cooper as Hannigan’s brother, Rooster, and Amber Kennedy as his beaux, Lilly. Their numbers are well enough done, but it cuts the menace from their characters, so their plot to pretend to be Annie’s parents, kidnap and then murder her for the reward, doesn’t have the jeopardy it might.

While that force rather blurs the edges of Act One, it also serves to emphasises the strength of the storytelling of the whole production. So, as such, the all-dancing ensemble might not foreground the brutal reality of the American depression of the 1930 after the Hooverville episode, that reality bubbles around enough in the background to give the plot a coherence.

Hooverville. The Annie company. Uncredited pic supplied.

This a company is intent on creating spectacle and nuance in the performance rather than the singing. Go as many times as you like to see Sweeney give her Hannigan because you’ll spot a new background storyline going on in the big ensemble scenes every time.

Thanks to Nikolai Foster’s densely blocked direction, combined with great storytelling choreography from Nick Winston, there is simply too much to take in, in one viewing.

twinkle in their audacity

You will still come away humming the big tunes, no doubt, but it is in the lesser remembered numbers that this Annie really excels.

Which is not to say that the big tunes aren’t well sold. The opening scenes in the orphanage, with the exemplary six youngsters playing the orphans, twinkle in their audacity with Maybe and It’s a Hard Knock Life. While Annie’s initial performance of Tomorrow, to Sandy, is an object lesson of stage work with animals.

Broadway musical tap routine. The Annie company. Uncredited pic supplied.

It’s just that numbers like N.Y.C., where Warbucks, Grace and Annie walk through New York to take in a show on Broadway, are quite brilliant in their delivery, as they the promenade amidst New York characters then see the show itself (complete with tap routines), and end up with the dancers turning into horses as they drive a carriage through Central Park.

The big scene where Annie gets to meet Carl Sanderson’s President Roosevelt and instills her positivity on him with the reprise of Tomorrow – when the sun will come out – is subtly done too. No big grandstanding on the table here, but a growing understanding by the political cabinet of what is needed as they take the number over and it all ends with Roosevelt announcing his famous New Deal.

helps the flow and storytelling

A big call out too, to Colin Richmond for his clever set design and brightly entertaining costumes. The set, in particular, is a smoothly operating piece whose simplicity, flown-in elements and multiple entrances helps the flow and storytelling.

First staged in 1977, it needs saying that Annie is showing its age in some ways. While we certainly need positivity in our lives – and something of a New Deal would not go amiss – the idea of the beneficent billionaire seems rather over-optimistic in the current political climate where extremist political parties can be created and then bought.

Setting such billionaire-washing aside, however, this is a triumph of feel-good entertainment. And there is so much to like in this Annie all the way down the main cast, but with special mention to the hard-working, impeccably drilled ensemble who bring a freshness to every scene that they are in.

Running time: Two hours and 20 minutes (including one interval).
Playhouse: 18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA
Tue 15 – Sun 20 Sept 2026
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm; Wed, Sat mats: 2.30pm; Sun: 2pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.

King’s Theatre: 297 Bath St, Glasgow G2 4JN
Tue 2 – Sun 7 Mar 2027
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm; Wed, Sat mats: 2.30pm; Sun: 2pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.

ENDS

Radio show. The Annie company. Uncredited pic supplied.

ENDS

Tags: Alex Bourne, Amber Kennedy, Annie, Carl Sanderson, Christian Cooper, Claire Sweeney, Colin Richmond, Crossroads Live, June Young, Musicals, Nick Tudor, Nick Winston, Nikolai Foster, Playhouse, Review, Tanisha-Mae Brown, Thom Dibdin