The curtain opens on a bleak winter night in a Depression-era orphanage. One waif can't sleep and is crying "mommy, mommy, mommy" into the dreary silence.Another, blessed with a survivor's spunkiness, is preparing for her escape to find the parents who left their baby on the doorstep a decade ago.
          It's tear-jerking, heart-tugging drama. And this one, the musical "Annie" on stage at the Fox Theatre through Oct. 11, has touched the emotions of audiences (and even hardhearted critics) across the land.
          But it doesn't take long for the concoction to turn saccharine, a leaden confection that cries for some spice. Some tartness. Some levity.
          Enter Miss Hannigan, a harridan in a ratty chenille robe. She barks at her orphan charges with undisguised loathing, spanks the errant one with weary delight, and, with blustery nastiness, rouses all the orphans and orders them to scrub the wooden floors.
          The audience laughs with pleasure -- and relief -- everytime she comes on stage. The performance is a joy down to the closing snarl, "I always hated you -- ya little gold digger."

         As the keeper of the orphanage who attempts to thwart Annie's predictable adoption by financier Oliver Warbucks, Miss Hannigan is the villain you love to hate: an old maid who drifts through her routine days in a boozy haze listening to radio soap operas; a petty, loud tyrant easily outmaneuvered by her charges, one of whom regularly gets away with stomping on her toes; a jealous ne'er-do-well whose rage-filled scream when she learns of Annie's adoption strikes a chord in anyone who has been passed over by lady luck.
          Miss Hannigan's frustrations shine in "Little Girls," her ode to all of the things she hates about the orphans -- "little socks, little shoes, every little bloomer." Before the song ends, a sneer replaces her mocking smile and her gutteral voice grows to a bellow.
          Moments later, she steals the scene, singing and dancing "Easy Street," her paean to riches and fame that, like prosperity, must be just around the corner.
          Throughout that sparkling number, she is a study in contrasts with her co-conspirators, her limber brother Rooster and his leggy "financee" Lily St. Regis. When they strut, she jerks; when they shimmy, she sputters; when they glide, she staggers. Huffing and puffing, her belly undulates like an innertube on the tide.
          The audience claps with riotous approval, certain from this performance that the klutzy Miss Hannigan is really no threat to Annie's happiness.

          "Of course, I have things in common with her; doesn't every woman?" grinned Jane Connell. Connell, a Berkeley native who has more than 30 years of musical comedy experience, knows Miss Hannigan better than most: Off and on for the past two years, she has brought the crotchety orphanage to life on stage.
          "Anyone who has been forced to do something she hates understands Miss Hannigan's frustration," she explained, growing serious. "She's trying to do a job she's not capable of, but it's the Depression and she's trying to make do. She figures she's lucky to have a job but she can't stand what she's doing."
          The depth of Miss Hannigan's frustration is difficult to portray for Connell, a petite blonde whose exuberance and zest for life must be submerged before each evening's performance.
          "I want to be as honest as I can on stage, but it took me a long time to find Miss Hannigan in me," she explained from a chair in her plain dressing room at the Fox.

         "I couldn't live the way she does so it was hard to tap those strong emotions. But I never got tired of her, in fact I've found that I thrive on it. There's not a performance that I don't learn something about her or myself."
          A desire never to be trapped in a deadend job (or life) led Connell to a stage career that has spanned both coasts and embraced television and movies.
          "As a Depression child, I always wanted life to be more than everyday level," she said. "By the time I was 4 years old, I knew I wanted to act. I loved making people laugh; I still do.
          "I'm reading this book about the life of Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist, and look how thin it is. Even he had his share of ordinary days. Well, I don't want many of those days. I want to spend my life in something bigger than life-size. The theatre meets that need."
          As a drama student at Berkeley, Connell was introduced to her lifelong loves -- musical comedy and her performing and marriage partner of 32 years, musician Gordon Connell. For eight years after graduation, the couple entertained in Elizabeth Berryhill's Strawhat Revue out of the old town hall in Lafayette.
          "I love musical reviews, even though I don't have extensive training," she said. "Music is an extension of acting for me. If I thought about it, I would be afraid."
          Her memories of radio performances during those early years in the Bay Area are jolted every evening when Annie makes a plea for her parents return on "The Hour of Smiles." Laugh-filled routines with Gordon in the late '40s earned the couple the nickname, "Sweethearts of Musical Comedy."

         "There was no theatre in the Bay Area to speak of then except for tired road companies that dropped into town for a few weeks," Connell recalled. "People who wanted to work, to advance their careers, had to move to New York. In 1954, we decided to make the big leap."
          Less than a year later, a sadder, but wiser, couple was back on the West Coast.
          "We didn't make it and it was a real shock," said Connell, shaking her wispy curls in remembered disbelief. "Gordon worked at a toy store, and even with a 20 percent discount, we couldn't afford to buy our 2-year-old daughter Christmas toys. In a way, we were pretending that we were poorer than we were since presents came in from all the grandparents. Nonetheless, a few months later, we went home."

         Back in San Francisco, the couple played at the Purple Onion for a year, polishing their routines and rebuilding their confidence.The stint led to offers to perform in New York and the couple agreed to give the Big Apple another try. Nightclub appearances there at a variety of cabarets, including Julius Monk's Upstairs at the Downstairs, brought Connell her first BroAdway role in "New Faces of 1956."
          For the next 10 years, while her daughters were growing up, Connell continued her cabaret appearances and performed in a variety of off-Broadway productions, most notably "Threepenny Opera" in which she portrayed Miss Peachum in a company that included Ed Asner and Bea Arthur.
          " 'New Faces' was my first big break, I guess," Connell reflected, "but 'Mame' did more for my career. It's hard to miss, playing Agnes Gooch, unless you're an imbecile, because the words and music are so terrific.
          Her first audition for the role flopped; but with some practice with the part in summer stock, Connell succeeded and opened on Broadway in 1966 as the uptight foil to Angela Lansbury's flamboyant Mame.
          After steady work for more than two years with "Mame," Connell spent the rest of the '60s and most of the '70s in the constant hustle that a show-business career demands. Commercials, some off-Broadway and a number of tryout shows that never opened in New York kept her working.
          "I've always been able to make it in the biz," she said with pride in her voice.

          In 1973, Connell was summoned to Hollywood to recreate Agnes Gooch for the film version of "Mame" starring comedienne Lucille Ball. Connell, and most critics, advised audiences to stay away from the overblown spectacular that resulted.
          "I loved making a movie, living in a trailer and all that," she chuckled. "But working with a legend was fearful. Someone else had originally been cast but she didn't work out. Miss Ball said, 'Get me that girl that played it on Broadway.' I was no more than that to her, but I must say she was very supportive and could be sweet."
          All of Connell's experience with auditions and character roles paid off when in November, 1977, she tried out for the Miss Hannigan role.
          "I hadn't seen 'Annie' but I knew Dorothy Loudon (who created the role on Broadway) and I had looked at the album cover and song book," she remembered. "I decided to dress like the character and do a nasty song directed at children. But what song? I finally settled on a number I learned in kindergarten.
          "I started out singing real sweetly, 'I have a little dolly, her eyes are very blue,' " she said, demonstrating in a small, soft voice. "But by the end, all the anger comes out and I'm singing at the top of my voice, through clenched teeth."
          That rage, so transparent in Miss Hannigan, is what tickles audiences, Connell believes.

         "Rage is very funny, especially if it comes from a human being trying to adapt to circumstances beyond his or her control," she observed. "It's one of the reasons we laugh when someone slips on a banana peel. In 'Annie,' Miss Hannigan is trying to cope and can't.
          The challenges of the role, which includes a first try at dancing, are multiplied by working with the "real" (non-professional) children that are cast as orphans, Connell added.
          "I love the spontaneity that you get from children," she commented. "They are such naturals that you have to be damned truthful with yourself, honest in your portrayal, or it sticks out like a sore thumb.
          "You also have to be very secure. There's a point in the show, after the orphans sing 'You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,' that I enter and growl, 'Do I hear happiness in here?'
          "There have been times when I've just started that line, and one of them will wiggle or squirm or scratch. Now I just wait until they settle down before I open my mouth."

          Separated from her husband for the first time in their marriage -- "I love it" -- Connell fills the days on tour by reading. During her visit here last year, she stopped in at the San Diego Historical Society to learn more about her grandfather, Francis R. Bennett, publisher of the former San Diego Bee.
          When the phenomenon of "Annie's" success cools and the current tour ends, Connell will probably take a brief break in Europe before getting back to work.
          "I'm not a workaholic, but I'm scared to let the momentum down. When I'm home, I get this schizo feeling and I ask myself, 'Can I really do that?' I'm happy to goof off, but I'm just as happy to get back on the stage."