All that travelling north to make the Light shine brightly has been rubber-stamped by Knight being made an honorary life member, and he leaves with a sparkling account of Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan’s 1977 musical.
He knows Annie so well – this is his fifth production – but by comparison, York Light has not revisited the show since 2001 when the late titan of the York am-dram stage, Bev Jones, was at the helm as director, choreographer and conductor.
“No nonsense but great,” as Gemma Kirk, one of his Annies, described him in her 2026 programme recollections, grateful for his guidance into “what it’s like in the real world of performing”.
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Harriet Wells’ Annie and Primros’s Sandy in York Light Opera Company’s Annie at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Matthew Kitchen Photography
In turn, Martyn Knight believes the greatest joy of Annie is the chance to see young talent blossom, in this case in the nine-strong Yellow Team (on press night) and Blue Team of orphans, being nurtured under the erratic, maladroit tutelage of Annabel van Griethuysen’s ever-tipsy Miss Hannigan under the shadow of the Wall Street Depression in 1933 New York City.
Among those orphans is the precocious, wilful Annie, a role shared between Harriet Wells, so impressive as Young Alison in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Fun Home at York Medical Society last year, and Hope Day, whose stage credits list already takes in the Grand Opera House pantomime Beauty And The Beast, Opera North’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jemima Potts in York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and York Theatre Royal’s 2023 community play Sovereign.
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Martin Lay’s Rooster and Annabel Van Griethuysen’s Miss Hannigan. Picture: Matthew Kitchen Photography
It was all Wells that starts Wells on press night – Day’s nights would follow – as Harriet affirmed all that promise in Fun Home in a musical production on a much grander stage and scale. She looked every inch at home as much as Primrose, the four-year-old Golden Labrador, in the role of Sandy, the stray dog she befriends on the Big Apple’s impoverished streets.
Harriet’s Annie, she of the ginger hair and eternal optimism, is the show’s driving force, determined to find her long-missing parents. Her opening song may be Maybe, but she has the positivity of Definitely, not Maybe. Harriet has the nascent singing chops, the American accent, and all the indefatigable energy, reminiscent of Judy Garland’s Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz.
Director-choreographer Knight and assistant director Kathryn Addison bring out the full characterisation in Miss Hannigan’s cheeky, defiant orphans (Yellow Team members Elizabeth Reece’s Duffy, Sophie Helme’s Pepper, Perdie Rolfe’s July, Belle Sturdy-Flannery’s Tessie, Bea Wells’s Kate, Lottie Barnes’s Lizzie, Leonore Thornton’s Lilly and the particularly exuberant Emilia Cole’s Molly). Their dancing is so full of joy; their singing in It’s The Hard Knock Life a thrill rather than shrill.
Knight’s first instinct was that Annabel Van Griethuysen – who he first directed in her York Light debut in Guys And Dolls in 2018 – might be a little young for the sozzled sourpuss role of Miss Hannigan, but her audition had “Cast me” written all over it, he said.
As her programme profile states, Miss Hannigan is “one of my favourite characters in one of my favourite musicals”, and that assertion is matched by Van Griethuysen’s woozy headache of a performance: that skill of ‘drunk’ acting, flask in hand, but without overplaying it, so that there is still humour, even pathos, in her villainy: at once a lush, but louche. She’s a mighty fine singer too, caustic in Little Girls, full of bravado in Easy Street.
From Mr Bumble in Oliver to Callaghan in Legally Blonde and especially cut-throat Sweeney in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, Neil Wood has put the dark into York Light shows aplenty, but here he shines as principled industrialist Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, influential friend of the President.
Warbucks may have a house full of servants and famous paintings (latest acquisition, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa), but something is missing from a life fuelled by making money and the need to reopen his factories. Annie, the orphan he gives a home for Christmas, opens his heart with her belief that “the sun’ll come out tomorrow”.
Wood’s partnership with Wells’s Annie is delightful – Warbucks blooms as she blossoms – while his singing is full of warmth, conviction and resonance, assertive in N.Y.C, questioning himself in Why Should I Change A Thing? and reflective in Something Was Missing.
Sarah Craggs’s unflappable Grace Farrell is ever supportive of Annie and Warbucks alike; Martin Lay’s Rooster and Chloe Jones’s Lily St Regis bring bags of wrong’un personality to grafter duo Rooster and Lily St Regis; Richard Weatherill makes a dapper radio show presenter, Bert Healy, performing Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile so perkily with Pascha Turnbull, Clare Meadley and Rhian Wells, who amuse as vintage harmony act The Boylan Sisters.
Fifty years after his York Light debut in Showboat (“when half the cast blacked up,” he recalls), John Hall brings gravitas to President Roosevelt, his singing as powerful as ever. Paul Laidlaw’s orchestra enrich every number, Scenic Projects’ set design and The Loft Costumes’ costumes are colourful and smart, adding to the high quality of Knight’s fantastic finale to his York Light years.
York Light Opera Company in Annie, York Theatre Royal, until February 21, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
