If you’re going to revive a 54-year-old Broadway musical that’s both a classic and an antique, then the new production of “Annie Get Your Gun,” here at the Shubert Theatre through Oct. 29, is probably the way to do it.
The 1946 show, the biggest Broadway hit of composer Irving Berlin’s career, has a gloriously hummable string of songs, from the brassy sass of “Anything You Can Do” to the lilting sweetness of “They Say It’s Wonderful.” But its book, originally written by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, has problems in this day and age. Its tale of Annie Oakley, the sharpshooter with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, creaks in spots and is considered politically incorrect in its treatment of Native Americans.
The solution, in librettist Peter Stone’s revised book, has been to cut away the troublesome spots (the “I’m an Indian Too” song is out) and, in Graciela Daniele’s staging, to play the good parts for all they’re worth.
Played as a show within a show, this new Broadway production opens with all guns blazing, tearing into the famous “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with rip-snorting, everybody-on-stage singing and prancing. The dances, choreographed by Daniele and Jeff Calhoun (who also staged the road company edition here), are fresh, peppy and inventive, delivered with athletic bounce by the chorus; and the performances, from smallest to largest roles, are bursting with good cheer, punched across by an unrelentingly energetic cast.
Leading the ensemble, as Annie, is Marilu Henner, who got her start in musicals while she was a teenager in Chicago. She delivers the role’s country bumpkin humor, show business bustle and starry-eyed femininity with all-out enthusiasm, partnered with equal zest, and a big singing voice, by Rex Smith as Frank Butler, the handsome, swell-headed sharpshooter whom Annie adores.
The supporting roles of the secondary romantic couple (Claci Miller and Eric Sciotto) and the man-hungry spinster (Susann Fletcher) are handled with similar fervor. Even the musical’s smallest actor, Mitchel Federan, as Annie’s little brother Jake, gets into the swing of things with his acrobatic show biz flourishes.
George McDaniel, silver-haired and genial, is Buffalo Bill, who acts as a welcoming master of ceremonies for the show. Larry Storch, comically deadpan underneath a huge feathered headdress, is Chief Sitting Bull, looking as if he’s posing for the portrait on the back of an American Buffalo nickel..
The setting, which puts the orchestra on stage, at the edges of the playing area, is by Tony Walton; the costumes, from fancy buckskins to extravagant spangles, are by Wiliam Ivey Long.
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“Annie Get Your Gun”
When: Through Oct. 29
Where: Shubert Theatre, 22 W. Monroe St.
Phone: 312-902-1400
