Anything Goes

By: Ash Martovich

Another year, another musical! This year's musical, however, was slightly different than past years. For the first time in Portland High School history, the middle school participated in the high school’s spring musical production.

This year’s show, “Anything Goes” followed Reno Sweeney, a nightclub singer and her friend Billy Crocker, a Wall Street worker as they embark on a cruise to London. Meanwhile, an electric public enemy and villain, Moonface Martin, snuck on board in order to flee the country. With marriage proposals and fake disguises, comedic chaos and hijinx ensues. Along with the laughs, there were several musical highlights, dance numbers and powerful vocal performances. 

Show directors, along with some audience members, were interviewed about the musical. Director Elisha Millerd made sure everything ran smoothly in a timely manner. She was asked what she thought about the musical and she responded with  “overall it went beautifully seeing how everything came together after months of preparations.” 

When Millerd was asked what it was like to work with the middle schoolers, her response was “it was definitely a challenge, but overall it added to the dynamic of the cast and we were able to get more kids for next year's musical.” 

PHS Social Studies teacher Sara Fogle attended this show and said it was “really good, it was nice to see the kids express themselves in different ways outside the classroom and see their talents.” 

Each cast member has a special connection to the roles that they play; it's like immediately when they get assigned the roles, it becomes their second personality. They captured the roles of the characters perfectly. Each actor did an amazing job portraying their roles. 

The cast, set crew, tech crew, and pit all went above and beyond to make sure everything was finished on time and making sure everything ran smoothly, many of them coming in on their lunch or flex and their study halls to work on either music or building the set. In a team effort, everyone did their part and more.

Lead actor Nija Chester-Payne held rehearsals during mentor and study hall to help people learn their lines or learn the choreography. Some came in to help with painting the set.

Students were asked to do a survey on what they thought about the musical this year. One of the questions was “what was your favorite part of the musical” and some top responses were: the humor, the cast, the set pieces, seeing friends on the stage, the dancing, the music, and pit.  

Each fall, the directors get together to choose the next musical, there's a lot to consider when choosing a musical they have to think about the cast size, what would be appropriate cast wise, music wise,  gender roles and singing range and fit all the parts. 

There is a lot of anticipation to see what next year brings for the students who choose to continue their journey in the musical field and for the students who will be joining the musical for the first time and for the seniors who are leaving this year.

“Anything Goes” was performed in previous years first in 2002 then again in 2013, this is not uncommon for Portland High School for example: in 1993 and 2023 “Once Upon a Mattress” was performed along with “Bye Bye Birdie” which was performed in 1998 and 2018 it's not uncommon for musicals to be repeated not once not twice but maybe even three times in Portland history.