In this 1946 comic-romantic musical, set around Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Annie Oakley is a star attraction because she is a female sharpshooter. Irving Berlin’s instant hits are still on target: There’s No Business Like Show Business, I Got the Sun in the Morning and, my all-time favourite, You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun, “as good a comic song as has ever been written by anybody”, according to Stephen Sondheim. But the action? Well, out of its time, that can seem more than a little off-key.
Book (by brother-sister writing team Dorothy and Herbie Fields) and lyrics play around cultural assumptions about race and sex. They send up stereotypes, yet rely on audiences to appreciate them to get the joke. The joke wore thin. In 1999, a revised version excised much material featuring indigenous peoples. It’s this reworking that director Paul Foster bases his production on.
But any attempts to shoot stereotypes out of the show have missed. A subplot featuring showman Frank’s assistant, Dolly, inspiring the love of an indifferent man through her reaction to an imagined assault, is racially offensive and sexist. Time spent on Annie’s wilting longing for Frank, who does nothing dramatically to win her love, is disproportionate.Sharp sets (Laura Hopkins) and even sharper tunes (musical director Paul Herbert) and choreography (Alistair David) can’t compensate for too little action and too much moping.
Only one thing almost persuades me that this bashed-about rehash is worth staging and that is Anna-Jane Casey’s performance as Annie: here, anything she can do, none can do better.
• Annie Get Your Gun is at the Crucible Theatre until 21 January
