Overview
When Anything Goes opened at the Alvin Theatre on November 21, 1934, it offered Depression-era Broadway audiences an elegant escape: an ocean liner, mistaken identities, romantic complications, celebrity criminals, glamorous costumes, and the sophisticated music and lyrics of Cole Porter. Set aboard the S.S. American traveling from New York to London, the musical follows Billy Crocker, a young Wall Street broker who secretly boards the ship to pursue Hope Harcourt, the woman he loves—even though she is engaged to the wealthy Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Billy receives help from nightclub singer and evangelist Reno Sweeney and gangster Moonface Martin, setting off a series of disguises, misunderstandings, and increasingly improbable schemes. The plot is deliberately farcical, but the score became one of the defining achievements of 1930s musical comedy. Songs including “Anything Goes,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You're the Top,” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” helped establish the show as an enduring showcase for Porter's combination of wit, romance, rhythmic sophistication, and verbal play.
Historical Era
Anything Goes premiered in the middle of the Great Depression, when unemployment remained extraordinarily high and economic insecurity shaped everyday American life. Yet its fictional world is filled with ocean travel, celebrities, wealthy passengers, elaborate parties, and romantic adventure. That contrast was part of its appeal. Broadway musicals of the 1930s frequently offered audiences forms of escapism, creating glamorous environments far removed from economic hardship. But Anything Goes also contains a more mischievous response to its era. Nearly every supposedly respectable institution in the musical becomes unstable. Social status can be faked, criminals become celebrities, wealthy people behave foolishly, and public admiration can shift almost instantly. The title captures the spirit perfectly: in this floating society, ordinary rules no longer seem to apply.
Historical & Cultural Context
The musical appeared during a period when American popular culture was increasingly shaped by radio, Hollywood, celebrity journalism, and mass entertainment. Anything Goes turns that fascination with fame into comedy. Moonface Martin is supposedly “Public Enemy Number 13,” yet criminal notoriety becomes almost another form of celebrity. Billy repeatedly reinvents his identity, while characters respond less to who people actually are than to the status attached to their names. Respectability itself becomes something that can be performed. Cole Porter's lyrics were especially suited to this world. Educated, cosmopolitan, and filled with references to contemporary celebrities and cultural trends, his songs transformed the rapidly changing language of popular culture into musical comedy.
The title song goes further. “Anything Goes” jokingly catalogs changing social standards and suggests that behaviors once considered shocking have become ordinary. Beneath its exuberance is a distinctly 1930s fascination with modernity and the breakdown of older conventions.
Production Innovation
Unlike Show Boat, Anything Goes was not revolutionary because it created a tightly integrated dramatic narrative. Its importance lies instead in demonstrating the extraordinary sophistication that the musical comedy form could achieve. Cole Porter's score combines intricate rhyme, conversational language, syncopated rhythms, romantic ballads, and topical references. “You're the Top,” for example, builds its humor through an escalating catalogue of comparisons drawn from high culture and popular culture alike. Porter could move effortlessly between elegance and absurdity. The show also became famous for its large-scale musical numbers, particularly the title song and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” Later revivals increasingly emphasized spectacular tap choreography, helping make dance central to the show's theatrical identity. Importantly, Anything Goes has never existed in one completely fixed form. Its book and score have been repeatedly revised, and different productions have added, removed, or repositioned Cole Porter songs. The musical audiences know today is therefore partly the product of Broadway's continuing tradition of revival and reinvention.
Historical Significance
Anything Goes became one of the most enduring examples of the 1930s Broadway musical comedy and one of the works most closely associated with Cole Porter. Its significance is different from that of Show Boat or Of Thee I Sing. It did not fundamentally transform Broadway through social realism, nor was it the first musical to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Instead, it represents the musical comedy tradition at an exceptionally high level of craftsmanship. Its continued popularity also demonstrates how revivals can reshape a musical's historical identity. Major Broadway revivals in 1987 and 2011 introduced the show to new generations, with the 2011 production starring Sutton Foster becoming particularly associated with its exhilarating choreography and performance of the title number. At the same time, revivals have had to confront material inherited from the 1930s, including racial stereotypes and outdated representations. Changes to the book and staging demonstrate how Broadway continually negotiates the tension between preserving theatrical history and reconsidering it through contemporary values.
Why It Resonates With Me
What I find compelling about Anything Goes is that historical significance does not always have to come from seriousness. The show demonstrates how wit, rhythm, choreography, and sheer entertainment can define an era just as powerfully as explicitly political theatre. Its repeated reinvention also shows why Broadway is a living history: the same musical can survive for generations while never being performed in exactly the same cultural context twice.