First, an admission: I did not watch the entirety of NBC's Annie Live production Thursday night. I caught about an hour of it, from the scene with "Easy Street" through the reprise of "Tomorrow" in the White House. As the title of this post might suggest, I was not impressed.
My major complaints are two. One, it completely destroys the flow of a show that was meant to be seen with only one interruption (at intermission between the acts) when you are interrupting for as much as three minutes every 10 minutes. This is the sort of broadcast that cries out for "limited commercial interruptions." Two: The pacing and tempo of the performance felt like molasses in January. Even numbers that ought to be rousing and enthusiatic like "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" seemed to be something the cast was just slogging through.
One other thing: Some of the choices made were bad. The production inserted the dance number "We Got Annie" from the movie version, that was included to let Anne Reinking show off her skills. Here, it was obviously chosen to allow Nicole Scherzinger do the same thing. But to fit it in, they had to cut the much better number "You Won't Be an Orphan For Too Long."
Frankly, I've seen high school productions of this show that were livelier.
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