We were delighted to produce the 1999 Broadway revival of the ultimate western musical in November 2004.
The show featured these show-stopping numbers:
There's No Business Like Show Business
Doin' What Comes Natur'lly
You Can't Get a Man With a Gun
Girl That I Marry
They Say It's Wonderful
Moonshine Lullaby
Who Do You Love, I Hope?
My Defenses Are Down
I Got the Sun in the Morning
Anything You Can Do
Annie Get Your Gun was the greatest box-office triumph of Irving Berlin's rich Broadway career; it is his only musical to achieve an initial run of more than one thousand performances. The score is his best and most varied for the theatre, yielding as it does at least half a dozen substantial song hits. One of these, "Show Business", has since become the unofficial anthem of the American theatre. A timeless fabulous musical.
REVIEW: Annie Get Your Gun
It never fails to amaze me how amateur performers can do a full day’s work and then still perform in a show that same evening, giving 110% energy along the way. But this is what I experienced with the Potato Room Players production of “Annie Get Your Gun”.
The Buffalo Bill Wild West Sow is tented near Cincinnati. The main attraction is sharpshooter Frank Butler. He has offered $100 prize money to anyone who can outshoot him. Enter Annie Oakley and her three siblings! Annie can’t read or count but what she can do is shoot and is therefore persuaded to challenge Frank. Before the contest she meets him (not knowing it is actually Frank) and is smitten. He, on the other hand, prefers women who are more peaches and cream. This isn’t Annie! But she wins the shooting match and is invited to join the show. She accepts and after a while her star billing makes Frank jealous. He leaves to join the rival Pawnee Bill show and the first half ends with Annie downcast.
Frank is a hit with the rival show and moves into smart society whilst Buffalo Bill’s show tours Europe, becoming a great success but financially losing money because of the high travelling and hotel costs. They return to the USA to try and form an alliance with Pawnee Bill’s show who they think are rich only to discover they are destitute as well. The only way to raise money is to sell Annie’s prize medals and she stakes these in a shooting contest against Frank to secure the merger. Her friends interfere with her rifle to ensure she loses the contest but Frank realises something is wrong and lends her his rifle instead. After they are all square following the first round of shots, Annie’s friend Sitting Bull gives Annie advice that the way to win her man is to actually lose the contest. She promptly does this, wins Frank’s heart and now the new Wild West Show will feature Mr & Mrs Frank Butler!
“Annie Get Your Gun” is a wonderful example of what the Broadway conventional musical score is. Every song is a hit and draws on the rich legacy of American popular music. “There’s no business like show business” is the ultimate showbiz anthem. “My defences are down” and “The girl that I marry” are standouts as is the great “me too” duet, “Anything you can do” between Frank & Annie. “They say it’s wonderful” and “I got the sun in the morning” display the soft and optimistic side of the heroine with passion and tenderness whilst “Doing what comes naturally” and “You can’t get a man with a gun” shows her brash side.
I thought that Ruth Taylor in the lead role was superb! Excellent is often an overused adjective but nothing else really describes her performance. Great stage presence, superb voice and bucketfuls of energy made this one of the best amateur performances I have seen in a long time and she would rank way up the list of many professionals I have seen as well!
Ruth was extremely well backed up by firstly her leading man, Chris Nuttall playing the role of Frank Butler, who too has a great voice and was perfect in the part. Great support also came from stalwart of the amateur stage Christine Castle as Dolly Tate, Les Appleyard as Charlie Davenport, Raymond Williams as Buffalo Bill and John Fisher as Sitting Bull. I was also very impressed with two of the younger performers in the society, Ben Walton as Tommy Keeler and Katie Elms as Winnie Tate. The chorus, of around twenty in number including some youngsters, provided a solid background for the big chorus numbers, particularly ”There’s no business like show business” and “I got the sun in the morning”.
The production, superbly directed by Stuart Woolf, was slick and kept the show moving at a good pace and as usual Louise Denison’s choreography was outstanding. With a relatively small stage at City Varieties it is always difficult to produce good dance routines but somehow Louise manages to fit them in and I thought some of the younger dancers were outstanding. More space was created by putting the orchestra at the back of the stage (dressed appropriately in cowboy hats) and they were extremely well directed by Dean McDermott. Dean does an excellent job in ensuring that the orchestra supplements the performers and never drowns them.
In 1946 and 1947 “Annie get your gun” ran for an incredible 1,147 performances at the Imperial Theatre in New York and 1,304 performances at the Colliseum in London. It is only running for 6 performances in Leeds this week but if the rest of the week is as good as the opening night then audiences are in for a cracking night out! Try and see it if you can.
John Burland
Dine Direct Theatre Reviewer