BWW Reviews: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN At Oyster Mill Playhouse

ANNIE GET YOUR GUN - it's a classic. Lyrics and music by none other than Irving Berlin, and two-thirds of the songs in the show now popular standards, or at least well-known. Book by the legendary Dorothy Fields and her brother, Tony winner Herbert Fields. First on stage with Ethel Merman in 1946, it most recently copped Tonys in 1999 for best revival of a musical and for Bernadette Peters, as well as a special award for Reba McEntire in 2001.

Still, it's not exactly the perfect show... but more on that later.

It's on stage right now at Oyster Mill Playhouse, directed by Patrice Whitson, and starring Kat Prickett as Annie Oakley. It's always a delight to see Kat Prickett on the stage and this is no exception - from her introduction as a backwoods hooligan with a rifle to her growth into a performer decorated by the heads of state of Europe, she's a delight.

The story in the show isn't exactly true, of course - she met star shooter Frank Butler, and eventually married him, yes, but without the conflicts presented in the show. However, she did have a fierce rivalry with another female sharpshooter already in Buffalo Bill's troupe, LillIan Smith (no, Annie Oakley wasn't the first female sharpshooter to perform, but she was in fact America's first female superstar performer). But it's at least somewhat in the general vicinity of fact - Annie Oakley was indeed informally adopted by Chief Sitting Bull; yes, that's true, too. And it's always a great deal of fun to see Kat Prickett roll with the story in a musical. It's also always a joy to see a younger performer sing Annie - the tendency, because of Ethel Merman's age when she took the part (ditto Bernadette Peters) is to cast Annie Oakley as far older than she actually was. Kudos to director Whitson for avoiding the common trap of having Annie Oakley come out from the backwoods looking and sounding 40 years old.

There are some other delights in the cast as well - it's good to see Luke Leone, fresh out of York Little Theatre's THE LITTLE MERMAID JR, playing Tommy, the half-Irish, half-Native American knife thrower. The Apollo award nominee shows his stuff once again in the secondary love story of Tommy and Winnie. Emily Homberger, herself an Apollo Award winner, is charming as Winnie Tate, in love with Tommy despite her sister and guardian's vehement prejudices against Native Americans. Keith Bowerman as Charlie Davenport is a joy, especially playing against Carole Cuthbertson's Dolly Tate, virago of the Wild West shows - their scenes together are wonderfully comic. Robert Zaccano feels like a natural fit for Buffalo Bill himself. And a side shout-out must be given to New York socialite Sylvia Porter Potter - it's a pleasure to see Joyce O'Donnell in a just-larger-than-cameo role now that she's allegedly retired from the stage.

The one overwhelming staging flaw of this production is an unavoidable handicap of Oyster Mill - the size of the theatre. The stage is crowded (though it's always wonderful to see a community theatre production that has so many participants in it), and the dance scenes feel cramped. The New York ballroom scene feels as if the dancers are unable to cut loose, and indeed there were some near-misses as actors navigated the stage. (If ANNIE GET YOUR GUN has this issue, the upcoming EVITA at Oyster Mill may pose a tremendous staging challenge. Oyster Mill is an intimate stage, best suited for the smaller and wonderful plays that many theatres are far too large to produce effectively.)

Other than that, there's a certain datedness to this musical. It's not the historical setting - and kudos to Drenda Cordiero and her team for some nicely executed period costumes, especially for the women - but the overarching plot. Annie loves Frank, who won't marry anything but a feminine little thing and certainly not a woman who shoots as well as he does, so... people conspire to help her get her man by helping a champion shooter lose a contest? In an age where men buy calendars of bikini models with M-16s, and a female Vice Presidential candidate's shooting skills have been praised, that's painful to watch. And the depiction of Chief Sitting Bull as a stereotypical comic Indian is equally so. Admittedly these were conventions in 1946, but they're potentially off-putting in 2013. But even so, that's no reason to avoid the music. ANNIE GET YOUR GUN is some of Irving Berlin's best work, from "There's No Business Like Show Business" to "Anything You Can Do", well-known numbers, to the unjustifiably overlooked "Moonshine Lullaby," which deserves to be far better known; it's a brilliant little piece of jazz-blues, here nicely performed by Kat Prickett and the men's ensemble.

Watch out for some nice pieces of business in this production, from Doug Miller's rifle twirling to Joyce O'Donnell's owning the stage in her walk-on and of course Luke Leone's (staged) knife-throwing, and for virtually all the fiendish machinating of Carole Cuthbertson as Dolly Tate.

If you love the music in this show, it's nice to see it with an adult cast - too often these days it's relegated to high school productions. And it's better yet to see it with Kat Prickett's solid lead, so at Thanksgiving, we must give thanks for her all-American heroine. If you've never seen it live, this is your chance. At Oyster Mill Playhouse through November 24. For tickets, call 717-737-6768 or visit www.oystermill.com.

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