This week's school of hard knocks is Albertus
Albertus Magnus stages 'Annie'
The three seniors at Albertus Magnus High School will share the stage in “Annie” this weekend, but each arrived at the stage in the Albertus gymnasium by a different path.
Sophia Lopez has been acting all along, from a turn in “Legally Blonde” back in freshman year. She plays Grace Farrell, the dutiful assistant to Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks.
Molly Malice, who plays the devilish orphanage owner Miss Hannigan, started out on the stage crew before the acting bug bit.
And Jonathan Peach plays Rooster, Hannigan’s ne’er-do-well brother who hopes for a ride on Easy Street. “Annie” is Peach’s first musical.
A flock of freshmen
Malice says an influx of freshmen this year has brought energy to “Annie.”
“We got a lot done in a short amount of time and we’ve had a good time, so far,” she says, showing a bit of optimism her hard-drinking character might not recognize.
“I’m always carrying around my flask,” she says. “Every time I pull it out, I just have so much fun.
“Being Miss Hannigan, there’s just so much authority that I get to exercise,” Malice says. “I get to yell and I get to scream and have so many different traits and behaviors I haven’t done before. I did stage crew my freshman year and so coming from that (where she was not seen or heard), I get be loud and be myself.”
In last year’s “Addams Family,” Malice played Alice, who also has a different sort of encounter with powerful drinks. A truth serum turns her from a mild and bored housewife who speaks in rhymes into a raging teller of uncomfortable truths.
This year, Hannigan is surrounded by little girls, which she figures is reason enough to drink and which Malice figures is a great excuse to go all out in service to the character.
Seeing herself in her character
The polar opposite is Grace Farrell, Warbucks’ loving and gentle assistant, played by Lopez.
“I like it because I feel it’s really me, especially when I’m with my friends,” Lopez says. “I feel happy and giddy and sweet and I like that she’s kind of like Annie’s mother figure.”
Asked for her favorite moment, Lopez gushes that she loves it all — which is kind of a Grace Farrell answer — and then Malice reminds her of a bit of comedy Lopez does. When Warbucks says the party for Annie should include champagne, Grace, in her excitement to get the champagne, runs into a wall before declaring she is fine.
“I feel like that’s really me, also,” she says with a giggle.
A Rooster arrives for Mr. O
Peach, the stage newbie, plays the over-the-top Rooster, a man who has designs on Warbucks’ reward money.
“It’s out of my comfort zone. I’m very reserved, so this is like super weird,” Peach says. “It’s my first year doing this.”
He is playing Rooster because director Cesar Orozco — whom the cast calls “Mr. O” — asked him to.
“Well, Mr. O needed boys to be in the play and he knew I played music,” he says, mentioning that he plays guitar on his own, occasionally at open-mic nights. An influence is Elliott Smith, whose thin, reedy voice is a far cry from Broadway musical style.
“But I do like blues, so that kind of goes in there” with Rooster’s song, “Easy Street,” Peach says. In that song, he and his girlfriend, Lily St. Regis, conspire with Miss Hannigan to con their way into the reward money that Warbucks has offered to find Annie’s parents.
“The dancing is pretty fun. I’d say the intro is kind of crazy,” he says. Peach isn’t getting too worked up about this musical experience. He’s here. He’s playing the role. Asked if he wished he had tried out for the musical years ago, he answers on a typically even keel.
“It was never really in mind so I don’t know,” he says. “Never too late, I guess. I don’t think I would have wished I had done it sooner, I think this is a nice time, just to do something before I leave school.”
Before he leaves school, and when the run of “Annie” is over, Peach and the other seniors will take part in an Albertus tradition. They’ll sign the wall in the costume room, just as seniors have before them.
There are names alongside “Mamma Mia 2024” and “Addams Family 2025” and “Little Shop of Horrors 2018” and “Seussical 2019.”
And, come Sunday, there will be names alongside “Annie 2026.”
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Paid subscribers can continue below to unlock so much more from my visit to Albertus Magnus: interviews, photos and videos.
+ What I saw at rehearsal: Life imitates hard-knock art
+ “Senior Moment” videos: Molly Malice on rekindling a love for theater; Sophia Lopez on a ‘Bend and Snap’ finale; and Jonathan Peach on his first musical
+ Photo gallery: ‘Annie’ in 27 photos
+ Video: A bit of ‘It’s the Hard-Knock Life’
+ On stages this week
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