Playing the titular character in the musical “Annie” was never on Stefanie Londino‘s bucket list.
“I was 5-foot-9 from about fourth grade on so Annie was never in the cards for me,” she said with a laugh. “I feel like I’ve sorta been waiting for Aggy Hannigan for about 15 years.”
The wait ended in September when Londino was cast in the role of the authoritarian head of the Hudson Street Orphanage. Miss Hannigan is an alcoholic and a bully who loves her job but hates the girls, especially Annie.
“She’s my first villain and I feel like that is absolutely the way to go,” Londino said during a phone call last week from Los Angeles, where the show was wrapping up a three-week run. It comes to Centennial Hall with Broadway In Tucson Jan.3-8.
“I think … the most interesting female characters are the bad guys,” Londino said. “They’ve got plans and they’re trying to make things happen and that’s exciting.”
“Annie” is the story about a mischievous orphan looking to escape the wrath of Miss Hannigan and be part of a real family. She would prefer it was with her birth parents; she was left on the orphanage front steps as a baby with a locket as the only reminder of her parents.
When the wealthy Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks steps in to take an orphan home to his mansion for a week — he’s looking to improve his public image — he taps Annie. He’s ambivalent to her existence at first but then becomes enamored, offering to buy her a new locket. When she tells him the story of the locket, he offers a $50,000 reward for her birth parents to come forward and reclaim her.
That’s where Miss Hannigan’s wheels start turning, and with the help of her brother, Rooster, and his girlfriend, Lily St. Regis, she plots to claim the child and money for herself.
Londino calls playing Miss Hannigan “a dream role.”
“She’s kind of a nightmare, but the best kind of nightmare,” said the New York actress, who spends her off-time fronting the band West Side Waltz with Paul Saylor, her husband of seven months. “It’s a dream role because in music theater, the women characters often tend to be side characters to the men characters or an accoutrement to the plot rather than a driver. And Hannigan is a driver. She provides the entire engine of the piece. Annie drives forward and without Aggy to push back you have a really saccharine happy ending kind of a show. So it’s interesting to play a woman who is not interested in hunting up a man; who is interested in making a better life for herself and who is in her own struggle. That’s the kind of part you want to play. It’s a lot to sink your teeth into and I’ve been reveling in it.”
This is Londino’s third national Broadway show tour and her second featuring a cast of kids. She worked with kids in the national tour of “A Bronx Tale” in 2019. She calls the girls in “Annie” “extraordinary” and said she was hoping for “a rabid bunch of little monsters, and they delivered in the best possible way.”
“They are just fierce and going toe-to-toe every night is a total delight,” Londino said. “They are just a delight. They are each individuals and such originals. And to smash them all together is this kind of crazy pot that I like. They are full of pranks and tricks and mostly hugs and squishes. I’m honored by them on stage and off.”
She saves her biggest praise for 12-year-old Ellie Pulsifer, who plays Annie and sings the iconic tunes “Tomorrow” and “It’s the Hard-Knock Life.”
“You are not ready for Ellie Pulsifer. She is an incandescent Annie. She brings something entirely new to this part,” Londino said. “I will say no more than get ready; she’s coming for you. She’s extraordinary. Ellie is something else.”
Stefanie Londino and her husband of seven months Paul Saylor are in the New York blues-rock band West Side Waltz.
