Mary Antonini with the cast of Anything Goes (Shaw Festival, 2025) | Photo by David Cooper

An indelibly charming and perennial favourite, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes is very silly. Old fashioned and frivolous, certainly, but far from being de trop, the Shaw Festival production had me tapping my feet and beaming the whole way through. It is exactly what you imagine a Depression-era escapist musical comedy would be. Set aboard a luxury cruise ship with all manner of thwarted and aspiring lovers, bumbling tycoons, gangsters disguised as holy men, brassy, enterprising broads and, uh, sailors!—there is plenty of fodder for madcap, ridiculous antics and they come fast and furious. Continue Reading