Let it be said at the outset that I came to Annie Get Your Gun already armed with good will; I'd heard that despite the show's emphasis on marksmanship and shooting matches, not a single gun is fired on or off stage. As someone who loathes unnecessarily loud and startling noises, I felt grateful to director Graciela Daniele for finding clever and completely convincing ways of representing gun shots other than the piercing blasts New York theater too often accepts (Les Miz, Everybody's Ruby -- are you listening?).
So I sat in the Marquis Theater, primed and ready to enjoy an old fashioned Broadway musical with festive settings, classic ditties and a bona fide diva playing a role that, while not made for her, with twiddling could be reworked in her own image. To some extent, all three of the above elements are on view in this Annie. Designer Tony Walton offers a side-show big top in pleasing, softly lit brown hues; composer-lyricist Irving Berlin penned three grand comedy numbers and a half-dozen other hummables; and Bernadette Peters brings a ragamuffin sweetness to her Annie Oakley. Critics have balked at her attractiveness and delicacy in a role once (unforgettably) stormed through by that Broadway Brunnhilde, Ethel Merman. However, there is something to be said for a genuinely feminine Annie; Frank's romantic interest can be believably kindled, and she can be "as soft and as pink as a nursery" if she so chooses.
For his part, handsome and effortlessly macho Tom Wopat is a good choice for Frank Butler. We like him, especially since his sexist leanings are less about keeping a woman in her place than simply being bested at his own game. However, each time this Gun hits a couple of bulls-eyes, it deliberately and cringingly misfires. Some of Walton's settings are road-show tacky (e.g., the ballroom chandeliers that look like hundreds of fly eyes), some musical numbers get trampled by their staging ("Doin' What Comes Nat'rally" gets so carved up by Annie and her kids, one can hardly tell it's a ribald tune about coitus; On "My Defenses Are Down," the cowboys surrounding Frank Butler are swishy enough to be cowgirls); and Peters, though fine on most of the ballads, has too mushy a delivery and too coy a presence for the uptempos.
For the sake of political correctness, librettist Peter Stone's revisions to Herbert & Dorothy Fields' book include dropping "I'm An Indian, Too" (shrug) and "I'm A Bad, Bad Man" (deep sigh) in favor of labored scenes wherein the Indians come off smarter than the anglos. Well intentioned, yes; funny, rarely. So many wrong choices are made, it isn't until the last half hour that we truly enjoy the romantic sparring of Annie and Frank. Peters cavorts deliciously on "An Old Fashioned Wedding," the final shooting match satisfyingly resolves a seemingly unfixable rivalry, and the ending still appeals to the romantic in all of us. After more than two hours of spraying the target with a blunderbuss, at least Daniele, Calhoun and Stone know enough to finish the job with Cupid's arrow.
