'Annie': A Culture Warrior Rides Again

“Two nights after Obama was reelected, you could feel it in the audience,” says Thomas Meehan, 83, the Tony Award winner who wrote the book to the 1977 musical Annie, which recently opened in a new revival on Broadway. “In 35 years, I never saw such great applause for the White House scene before.”

Obama’s campaign slogan was “Forward.” Annie’s hopey-changey number is, of course, Tomorrow. And, in case you’ve forgotten, her showstopper is the most overtly political number you may ever see at a Broadway theater that also sells tiny pink T-shirts. When the big-hearted moppet reprises her vague-as-a-politician promise about the sun coming out, she’s standing on a conference table in the Oval Office of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “Like Annie, I’ve just decided that if my administration’s going to be anything,” he says, “it’s going to be optimistic about the future of this country!” He conceives a New Deal on the spot.