Photo Source: Carol Rosegg
Having failed at teaching dancing, singing, and physical education in various Midwestern towns, Taylor finds herself, at 63, penniless and on the lam from debts. She seeks refuge with her sister, Jane, only to be sent packing by her brother-in-law for her self-indulgent ways. The itinerant Annie ends up in Niagara Falls, N.Y., where, desperate for both income and recognition, she concocts her barrel plan. She hires the shady Russell, and the two plan her feat to coincide with the Pan-American Exposition in nearby Buffalo.
But though Annie succeeds in her daredevil scheme, she's her own worst enemy when it comes to capitalizing on it. A bore as a public speaker, unwilling to share with her audiences what she felt during her fall, too proud to play the vaudeville circuit, and increasingly full of herself and paranoid, she fires Russell, dismisses her sister from her life, and continues on a downward spiral until she ends up back at Niagara Falls, selling penny postcards of her achievement.
LaChiusa has set a daunting task for himself in telling a tale in which there is but one central character and one major supporting character, surrounded by a host of minor roles. So it's quite an achievement that it mostly works. He imaginatively employs a five-person ensemble to play all those people as well as function as an evocation of society. Where he runs into trouble is in Act 2, which begins with an awkward flashback that is too much of a drag on forward motion. This is a linear show that needs to stay linear. What's more, since Annie's post-Niagara story is such an unrelenting downward slide, its telling requires greater economy.
Director Jack Cummings III and choreographer Scott Rink have staged the show with considerable invention on a less-than-ideal rectangular strip of stage flanked by the audience on either side. Going toe to toe with the dynamic Testa is Andrew Samonsky. A superb singing actor whom I first noticed for his arresting Lt. Cable in the PBS broadcast of Lincoln Center Theater's "South Pacific," Samonsky is absolutely terrific, detailed and idiosyncratic, as the cynical yet softhearted Russell. Theresa McCarthy is a suitably demure Jane, then very funny as a blowsy and vulgar blonde whom Russell recruits to impersonate Annie after she fires him. Julia Murney is all feminine steel as Carrie Nation and gives Act 2 a welcome jolt of energy in her account of the revivalist song "Break Down the Door." Tally Sessions scores as McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz (an inspired idea from LaChiusa); Stanley Bahorek is memorable in his scene as a young World War I soldier who saw Annie's feat as a boy; and D.C. Anderson is suitably sleazy as Annie's new manager.
Michael Starobin's gorgeous six-piece orchestration sounds great under Chris Fenwick's smart and sensitive musical direction. It's heartening to watch the gifted LaChiusa continue to treat the musical as an American art form. There's nothing wrong with "Queen of the Mist" that can't be fixed, nor do the problems outweigh the pleasures. So take the plunge. You'll be glad you did.
Presented by Transport Group Theatre Company, in association with Sarah Ackerman, Sase Sham, Benjamin D. Goldberg, and Jennifer Orr, with major support from the Shen Family Foundation, at the Gym at Judson, 243 Thompson St., NYC. Nov. 6–Dec. 4. Schedule varies. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.transportgroup.org. Casting by Nora Brennan Casting.
