It's a wonderful summer with great music in Stanley Park.

Michelle Creber is the 9 year old carrying a whole theatre production on her shoulders in the lead role, wonderfully supported by David Adams who lives and breathes Daddy Warbucks.

This production sparkles from the opening overture to the finale.  It's a classic feel-good musical with a signature song that everybody will recognize:

“The sun will come out…. Tomorrow! Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun.”

There wasn't anything to complain about for the opening night production of Annie on Tuesday night.  The next night, people were still saying it was flawless.  Thanks to the deft direction of Glynis Leyson, more know as artistic director of Vancouver Playhouse Theatre, and recent director of Vancouver Opera's Rigoletto.

The story opens during the Depression, with orphans not quite read to settle down for bed time at an orphanage.  Annie soon decides to leave the orphanage to look for her mother and father, but winds up having dinner with homeless people, before she is picked up by the police and returned to the orphanage. 

The musical has songs or every one of Annie's adventures. Annie goes to live with multi-millionaire Oliver Warbucks, himself a former child orphan.  She meets president Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

Darkness (but not too dark) gathers when a subplot reveals that con artists plan to pretend to be Annie's real parents when Oliver Warbucks offers a $50,000 reward. 

The children actors playing orphans fill the production with life.  Little Olivia Steele-Falconer is a scene stealer.  This is a