Anna-Jane Casey in Annie get Your Gun at the Crucible Theatre, London. Picture: Johan Persson
Annie Get Your Gun continues at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield until 21 January 2017.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Most prestige venues now opt for Christmas shows that, while they may be ‘family entertainment’, avoid Santas, sleighs or slapstick.
This year’s Crucible Theatre offering transports us instead to the Wild West and the adventures of Annie Oakley.
The story goes that a reluctant Irving Berlin was given the script of Annie Get Your Gun for the weekend and came back on Monday with ‘Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly’, ‘You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun’ and ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’. Reasonably productive couple of days, then.
The last of these opens the show with Ben Lewis, as Frank Butler, strolling through the auditorium, a cappella, and gradually drawing in the band and the ensemble. With Stetson and six-gun, it brings to mind Curly’s entry in Oklahoma!
The temptation to slip into a pastiche of Ethel Merman’s unique coloratura must be considerable, but Lewis possesses a dynamic baritone that sets the scene, asserting the masculine world of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
Enter the splendid Anna-Jane Casey, as Annie.
Modern American audiences would probably squirm as much as the one in Sheffield did at the corniness of her arrival, wearing buckskin, ‘totin’ her rifle and hunting for ‘varmints’. Embarrassment soon passes, though, as her strength of personality and talent become apparent.
Casey gives a riveting performance. There may be swirls of talented dancers around her, but it is her you watch and the voice is second to none.
The revised script may be a disappointment for feminists, but Casey’s argument rests on the dialectic of talent (‘Anything You Can Do’) in what is an all-round performance.
The second couple, Winnie (Lauren Hall) and Tommy (Cleve September), hit the right note of gauche naivety, but we know their separation, by domineering older sister Dolly (a splendidly brassy Maggie Service), is only temporary.
Other supporting roles, particularly Nicolas Colicos as an uncanny lookalike Buffalo Bill and Karl Seth, as Sitting Bull, offer contrasting colours and demonstrate that it is possible to assemble a cast that sings well throughout.
Lurking beneath the stage, the 12-piece band, under the direction of Paul Herbert, provides fine support for the varying moods of the show as they veer from schmaltz (‘The Girl That I Marry’) to raucous (‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’), never missing a gun shot cue.
Alistair David’s choreography stretches across the ensemble-demanding ‘yee-haw’ hoedown to a Viennese waltz and even a touch of ballet.
Similarly, Laura Hopkins’ design opens with a Monument Valley backdrop that transforms effortlessly into a New York skyline, having featured as a Pullman car in-between.
We need to re-invent golden era Broadway for new generations, many of whom will be unfamiliar with Irving Berlin’s showstopping numbers.
Director Paul Foster captures the energy and colour of this remarkable score and gives us a great show.
Mike Tilling
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.