Heartwarming / Anything Goes

• “I Get a Kick Out of You” shows that despite all her bravado, Reno is truly a hopeless romantic.
• Moonface’s Undying Loyalty is first showcased when he helps Billy get on the ship as payment for getting the feds off of his scent.
• Billy describes Hope to Reno, saying that she’ll love her. While Billy is a bit ignorant about Reno’s jealousy, it still comes across as very sweet and earnest.
• Billy starts to get depressed about Hope being out of his league when Reno comes to his rescue, telling him “You’re the Top”. Once he starts to feel better, Billy is quick to say the same to her.
  • This moment is especially heartwarming when you remember that Reno’s still in love with Billy, and by giving him this pep talk, she’s moving him closer to Hope and further away from herself.
• While they’re ultimately not a good match, Hope and Evelyn are shown to be fairly decent to each other, first displayed when Hope tries to get Evelyn to recover from his sea sickness, and he refuses to leave her alone while he rests.
• “Easy to Love” and the scene preceding it. Hope is instantly thrilled to see Billy, and while they start to squabble a bit over his treatment of Evelyn, she finds herself unable to hold back her feelings as they talk about the idea of settling down and having a family together. While she ultimately rejects Billy, it’s clear his heartfelt song has an effect on her, evidenced by her brief reprise as he walks away.
• His feelings are very misplaced and his words aren’t nearly as smooth as he thinks, but Eli’s feelings for Evangeline are sweet in their own way.
• Moonface getting Billy on the ship was one thing, but his later attempts to help him show that Public Enemy #13 is a bit of a softie deep down. He already repaid Billy’s favor, but he’s willing to continually stick his neck out for someone he’s just met. Sure, he helps him in ways that often fail and he commits his fair share of crimes along the way, but Moonface comes across as a genuinely good friend all things considered. Except when money’s on the line.
  • It doesn’t just extend to Billy, as he’s willing to do the exact same for Reno later on once she falls for Evelyn.
• After “Easy to Love”, it’s clear that Hope has been thinking a lot about what Billy says, as the next time we see her, she’s trying to convince Evangeline to free her from the Arranged Marriage. She’s quick to back down when Evangeline starts crying, but it’s the thought that counts.
• Evelyn’s Adorkable and excited reaction to seeing Reno, being quick to invite her to his cabin. Also noticeable in that he wants to introduce her to Hope. He may fall for Reno later, but he clearly had no intention of cheating on Hope and wanted to make things work.
• ZigZagged with “Friendship”. At first it seems like a straight example, being a light hearted song about what great pals Reno and Moonface are, but eventually becomes a competitive bout of Ham-to-Ham Combat with both parties insulting each other. But by the end, it they start to get it back on track and finish the song in high spirits.
• Keeping with the above, despite having a beautiful woman that he has crush on blatantly hitting on him, Evelyn never even thinks of cheating on Hope with Reno.
• When Moonface threatens to tell Hope what’s going on, Evelyn actually wants him to, thinking that it’ll make Hope happy. He may not have any idea what’s going on, but his heart’s in the right place.
• After being charmed by Evelyn’s innocent and dorky nature, Reno comes clean and tells him how she was setting him up. Particularly admirable given he didn’t suspect a thing, she just realized that he didn’t deserve to be framed like they were planning. And when Moonface comes in to threaten Evelyn, Reno instantly tries to stop him. From that point on, while she tries to help set up Billy and Hope, she treats Evelyn much better than before.
• Despite having a gun pointed at him, Evelyn continues to treat Moonface well. Believing that he’s coming to Reno’s rescue, he tells Moon how much he admires him. Once again, Evelyn may be ignorant, but he’s by far the kindest person we see on the ship.
• Despite her treating him like crap, Eli continues to be nothing if not a gentleman to Evangeline trying to calm her down and help her look for her lost dog.
• Eli’s accidental proposal to the Purser is definitely Cringe Comedy, but credit where it’s due, the Purser reacted better to it than most men in the 30s ever would. Also, while Elisha’s proposal is misguided in terms of both who it was intended for and who it was directed to, it’s still somewhat romantic.
• Hope coming to help her mom after Billy scared the daylights out of her. The mother in question may be a bitch, but still.
• Reno’s brief "The Reason You Suck" Speech, showing that she should be acting on her feelings while she still can.
• “It’s Delovely”, full stop. Unlike “Easy to Love”, Hope responds with pure happiness and laughter to Billy’s romantic singing, and gladly joins in. Billy can’t even get out the final line of the song before she kisses him. Unfortunately, it’s all undone by the next scene.
• Evelyn and Evangeline chase after Hope to help her when she runs away crying.
• In contrast to her speech to Hope, Reno stands up to Billy and calls him out for being bad to Hope. Billy tried to play it cool, but once Reno throws out the idea of Hope wanting to marry him, his true self instantly comes through.
• Despite Hope being quite depressed when it starts, even she can’t resist the urge to join in during “Blow Gabriel Blow”.
• Clearly Reno’s words got through to him, cause shortly after her performance, when asked for his “confession”, Billy realizes that he’s been acting poorly to Hope and publicly apologized and comes clean about who he is.
• While it’s undercut by his willingness to murder the innocent people that stand in their way, Moonface instantly jumps to Billy’s defense once he’s outed for being a non-criminal. Unlike Billy, Moonface actually is a gangster and wasn’t about to be thrown in the brig. While his quickness to get violent is anything but admirable, his willingness to help his friend is oddly charming.
• When Billy starts to feel suicidal, Moonface’s reaction is that of worried horror. He then goes on to cheer Billy up and show him to “Be Like the Bluebird”. While he doesn’t succeed in cheering Billy up, his showing of idealism is a rather nice surprise.
• While the circumstances are sad, Hope finally tells Billy that she loves him through a letter. While it would be a big stretch to say Billy’s in a good mood afterwards, this clearly lifts his spirits somewhat. The next time we see him, he’s anxious to get out and stop the wedding, a far cry from the man who was so resigned to his fate the last time we see him.
• Reno’s performance has caused Evelyn to fall completely for her, to the point where he’s writing and reciting poetry. While Reno’s still shown to be upset about the current circumstances, she’s still courteous enough to cheer Evelyn on his upcoming marriage.
• While he was originally just going to go back to his room, once Reno prods him enough, Evelyn is willing to tell her his family secret, something he’s never revealed to anyone up until this moment.
• “Gypsy in Me” may be a comedic number, but it still shows Evelyn revealing his feelings to Reno, and her falling in love with him over his romantic gestures and wild nature. The 2011 version was especially romantic, including a mid song kiss between the new couple and Evelyn offering Reno a rose as a parting gift.
• When Moonface sees that John’s upset after being thrown into the brig, he tries to cheer him up with a reprise or “Be Like the Bluebird”. Unfortunately, Billy puts a stop to it.
• When Reno shows up, she just seems so happy. When she was in love with Billy, she at least kept up her usual snark attitude. But when she falls for Evelyn, she doesn’t bother trying to act clever about it, she just gleefully goes on about how happy she is.
• As soon as he realizes Reno’s come to stop his wedding, Evelyn quickly tries to call it off.
  • Eli tried to help matters by offering rather impressive sums of money.
• While she stands off to the side in initially, when it seems like the wedding is about to happen, Hope steps in and helps Billy’s plan, offering herself as his bride. Evelyn then happily helps them together, and congratulates Billy on getting a great girl.
• Despite his earlier antagonistic behavior, Billy then helps set him up with Reno. Evelyn then quickly proposes, with both couples being together and happy at last.
• She really doesn’t deserve it, but Eli comes to Evangeline’s rescue at the end. And while Evangeline doesn’t deserve her happy ending, Whitney ends up doing pretty well, being richer than ever before and married to the woman he loves. The woman he loves is a Rich Bitch who doesn’t actually love him, but at least he’s happy.
• Cheeky ends up being all right and reunited with his owner.
• While their prior treatment was cruel, several productions have Luke and John come out at the end to celebrate with everyone else, showing that they got out. And luckily they weren’t there to witness our heroes acting like racist caricatures of their culture.
  • Made much more straightforwardly heartwarming in the 2021 West End run, where Luke and John agree to help with the plan by posing as Plum Blossom's lawyers, and get to deliver the resolution to the plot without nearly so much racial stereotyping.
• Moonface helping out at the end really is this when you think about it. He’s a wanted man who had already been put into the brig and had nothing to personally gain from helping his friends. But he did it anyway.
• The finale. All three united couples happily sing together (Eli and Evangeline’s happiness is shallow, but hey, at least they’re happy), and Moonface is content that he was able to help them all get together.