Romance blossoms aboard ship in this year’s winter musical.

“Anything Goes” is set aboard an ocean liner sailing from New York to England in the 1930’s.

“It’s a wonderful show. It’s been around for a really long time, but it’s probably a show that most of the people here didn’t know about before we started working on it,” Stratford theater director Ms. Sylvia Haynie said, adding that she also wanted to have a musical that focused on the strong female talent in the theater department.

The musical will incorporate tap dancing for several of the ensemble numbers, choreographed by middle school teacher Ms. Kailey Rhodes, who also helped introduce tap moves in last year’s show, “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

The cast includes 84 students from 1st-12th grade. One of the main characters is Billy, played by junior Griffin Hutchins. Billy falls in love with an engaged American woman, Miss Hope Harcourt, played by freshman Sarah Kate Sellers. Harcourt is sailing to England to marry a British nobleman. Instead, she must avoid her extremely controlling mother as she falls in love with Billy.

“Thankfully I got one of the few parts that doesn’t have to tap,” Sellers said.

There will be three performances at Stratford: Saturday, March 1 at 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 2 at 2 p.m.; and Monday, March 3 at 7 p.m.

Senior Holly Bean, who will play Hope Harcourt’s mother – Miss Evangeline Wadsworth T. Harcourt – said she likes this musical because “everyone gets to participate and it’s just fun and upbeat. There are lots of shenanigans and everything that could possibly happen does. It’s just so twisted and turned and its going to be lots of fun.”