Anything Goes

Music and lyrics by Cole Porter

SAOS Youth Theatre, director Rachel Davies

Stourbridge Town Hall, Thursday 3rd July 2025

The origins of the musical “Anything Goes” goes back to the 1930s and features music and lyrics by the legendary Cole Porter, widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. The book has gone through various iterations over time, hence six credited authors named on the front of the programme.

Several of the songs have become very well known over the years, most people will be familiar with the title track, “I Get a Kick Out of You” was a top 10 hit in the 1970s and I have seen “Friendship” in many a panto over the years.

Whilst familiar with the songs, this is the first time I had seen the stage show. This was also the first time I had seen this particular group in action and it is always encouraging to see such a large number of young people taking on the baton of this often mad hobby of ours and pulling out all the stops to entertain the audience. (Spoiler alert, they certainly did this).

On stage, it was hard to mark them out as a youth cast, it was only looking at the pictures in the programme afterwards that this became apparent – there was a lot of on stage maturity there.

This is largely a single set production, save for a scene in a bar right at the start, and what an excellent set that was. Depicting an ocean liner on stage isn’t easy, but what we had was breathtaking. We had a raised area for the bridge, steps on both sides and a couple of working doors at stage level in addition to the traditional left and right entrances thus allowing for a variety of entrances and exits.

There was a good use of “inserts” to depict the cabin rooms and a series of prison bars put in place to clearly mark out the brig area.

Quite often I have been to shows at Stourbridge Town Hall where the music has been pitched so high you can’t hear the singers, but none of that tonight as we had clarity all the way. Apparently the MD on the night had had to step in at short notice, but you wouldn’t have known that had you not been told ahead of time.

Some good choreography on display and with a cast of over 30, not easy to avoid people bumping into each other, but no everyone was well-drilled and knew exactly where and when ti to be at all times.

We had some good singing voices on display here – let’s be honest Cole Porter didn’t write too many bad songs but that’s not what’s being reviewed! – which kept the audience entertained throughout.

We had a good strong voice from Neve Pilliner as Reno on the aforementioned “I Get a Kick Out of You” with another highlight being the duet of “Easy to Love”.

We also had a fun performance of “There’s No Cure Like Travel” by the crew and sailors which, for those of us of a certain age, will have brought back memories of a Morecambe and Wise routine with Cliff Richard, albeit that was a different song and this time no mop buckets!

On the downside, “Blow Gabriel Blow” did seem to go on for ages and became a bit tedious by the end. No fault of the singers who were fine but I’d have certainly considered cutting this number down by about half.

In contrast, Alice Hamilton as Hope’s performance of “Goodbye Little Dream” was outstanding.

One of my bugbears in shows is people drinking out of obviously empty glasses and unfortunately at the start of act two we had a load of them, some of which were being waved around like, well, they were empty. Please in future, put something in there as it looks odd.

We also had one of the characters taking a drink from an obviously empty bottle later in the act as well – just stick some apple juice in there, that doubles well for a lot of spirits.

I’ve previously mentioned how well the cast performed, very ably led by Neve Pilliner who gave an outstanding performance in the role of Reno Sweeney. Very much channelling Marilyn Monroe in her appearance, this was a strong performance and she was very much centre of attention whenever she was on stage.

Alex Leggett was also excellent in the role of Billy Crocker, who by contrast is more of an unassuming character with a lot of subtleties. His team up with Reuben Southall as Moonface Martin gave the show a lot of the comedic aspects, and they certainly bounced well off each other.

Alice Hamilton gave us a solid performance in the role of Hope Harcourt, giving us a believable pairing up with Billy at the end whilst Georgie Jones gave us a joyous rendition of her mother Evangeline, getting some of the best lines and delivering them very well.

Ethan Davies gave us what I can only describe as an “interesting” performance as Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. I think I described this as a Monty Python pastiche, combining elements of “Upper Class Twit of the Year” and “Ministry of Silly Walks”. The former worked fine but I am not sure as to the point of the jerky leg movements were in aid of. Seemed to amuse some members of the audience, but just didn’t work for me. Shame, because as I say, the rest of his performance was very good.

Lily Wooldridge gave us what appeared to be her inner Bonnie Langford in the role of Erma whilst Dylan Henry and Ben Horton-Wrigley gave us an amusing double act as the conmen Spit and Dippy. In the original play these characters are Chinese so let’s just be thankful we didn’t go there!

To summarise this was a highly entertaining evening with a lot of energetic performances from a young cast who were clearly enjoying themselves as much as the audience. (I mean that in a good way obviously!) I look forward to seeing what this company does next.

Reviewed by – David G.