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Annie Get Your Gun
By Jana J. Monji
In these PC times when high schools are fighting to keep or change the
names of mascots and the tomahawk chop is in questionable taste, the
Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun has a lot going against it. When it
debuted in 1946, things were less complicated; women and minorities were
still shackled by tradition--restless, but firmly held in place.
Produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the musical was a
star-vehicle, tailor-made for Ethel Merman with music and lyrics by Irving
Berlin. Listening to recordings (being too young to have seen her on stage),
one hears Merman with her brassy voice playing a back hills girl in gawky
love. But Merman wasn't the only famous Annie Oakley.
In the 1947 road company, Texan Mary Martin would play Annie and her
performance in Los Angeles convinced Rodgers and Hammerstein to cast her as
Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Betty Hutton would play Annie Oakley in the
movie, but Martin lend her sweet soprano voice to the NBC television
production opposite John Raitt.
For this revival, Peter Stone has revised Herbert and Dorothy Fields
original book, changing the Frank Butler-Annie Oakley sparking to a more
agreeable romantic ambiance.
Butler is played with much aplomb by Tom Wopat--best known for his
television role in the Dukes of Hazzard or the more recent Cybill. But in
Stone's version, Butler is no longer a rake, proudly braying his successful
seductions in "I'm a Bad, Bad Man." He's not an innocent either, having had
a fling with his persistently hopeful and slightly racist assistant, Dollie
(Valerie Wright). But he's a more thoughtful and, dare I say, sensitive man.
The first act also loses Annie's "I'm an Indian, too," a tune that
celebrated her becoming Sitting Bull's adopted daughter by playing on tribal
names. The loss of neither song is particularly hard when you consider a
score that has given Broadway its anthem, "There's No Business Like Show
Business" and also includes the lovely "Moonshine Lullaby," and the
sarcastic one-upmanship banter of "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)."
In Stone's version, Butler opens the show, singing "There's No Business
Like Show Business," a cappella in a slow, almost mournful tone. Ron
Holgate, the actor playing Buffalo Bill, cranks up the center of Tony
Walton's big tent scenic design, inviting us into a play within a play where
a multi-ethnic cast cavorts in costumes that blend and merge the cowboy with
the Native American and the saloon girl with the rancher's daughter. The
effect of a bustier with chaps somehow works, giving a more streamlined
effect than the over-fringed costumes of past versions.
Bernadette Peters brings a dainty vulnerability to her Annie. She's is a
girl getting her first crush, longing for a kiss and more. Her Annie may not
know how to read, but when she breaks into her first song, "Doin' What Comes
Natur'lly," you have no doubt that she feels her carnal longings.
Director Graciela Daniele keeps all the sexual connotations winkingly clean
enough for a mixed audience--nothing as lewd and suggestive as "Rent" or
crassly over caricaturized as prime time sitcoms.
There's a delicacy, a sweet aching expressed in Peters' voice, even beneath
that twangy, hick accent. Peters' petite, winsome figure set against Wopat's
tall, hulking presence lends a romantic logic, a notion of male
protectiveness that in the end softens into love. There's also a flash of
pride that breaks through the haze of infatuation and flares into a mature
understanding between this Frank and Annie.
It might not be a perfect move to modernize a musical about another era
using this era's sensibilities, but this production certainly deserves the
Tony it won for best revival, if only for these two winning lead performances
(Peters also won a Tony) and the opportunity to introduce a new generation
to some of this century's loveliest tunes.
"Annie Get Your Gun," Marquis Theater, 1535 Broadway, New York.
Tuesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Wednesday and Saturdays, 2 p.m.; Sundays, 8 p.m.
$35-$75 (212) 307-4100.
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