Annie is the beloved musical based on Harold Gray's comic strip Little Orphan Annie, following a spirited, optimistic orphan growing up in a Depression-era New York City orphanage under the cruel, gin-soaked supervision of Miss Hannigan. When the billionaire industrialist Oliver Warbucks agrees to take in an orphan for the holidays as a publicity gesture, Annie's irrepressible hope and warmth gradually melt his gruff exterior, and what begins as a temporary arrangement grows into genuine familial love. Annie's ongoing search for her birth parents, complicated by con artists posing as her parents to claim a reward, drives much of the plot toward its heartwarming resolution. Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin's score, including "Tomorrow," "It's the Hard-Knock Life," and "Easy Street," pairs Depression-era grit with irrepressible optimism. Its message that hope and kindness can triumph even in hard times, embodied by its plucky red-headed heroine and her loyal dog Sandy, has made it one of the most enduringly popular family musicals ever written.

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