Annie Get Your Gun - The Muny

Annie Get Your Gun, which returns to the Muny after a twelve-year break, strikes me as a very different type of musical from the rest of those written during the era of “big” musicals. This era, beginning with Oklahoma and including My Fair Lady, South Pacific, and Hello, Dolly!, was a very different era for Broadway. Compared to today: shows were longer; casts were larger; dances were bigger, etc. This show does not have those, and yet it is still a classic and in some ways a product of its time.

First, the running time for this show is just over two hours, including a fifteen-minute intermission. That’s short when you compare it to My Fair Lady, which can stretch to almost three hours. The cast is about twenty people (that is almost enough for just the Waiter’s Dance in Hello, Dolly!), including the chorus, so the set designer has been creative about not making the stage look empty when everybody is out on it (with good results, too). On top of that, there is practically no dancing. I usually like watching dance at the Muny (A Chorus Line, 42nd Street, to name a few), so not getting any is more than a little disappointing.

Unlike today’s shows, however, character development is very stunted. In a theatre world that has grown used to complex characters that do not neatly fall into categories – we have Stephen Sondheim to thank for that one – these characters seem very flat, to the point that South Pacific – written by Oscar Hammerstein, who really had a black-and-white outlook on life – looks like a study of very complex people (and we all know that Nellie Forbush is no Sweeney Todd).

We must, however, remember why these characters are so flat: Ethel Merman. Merman I insist was an entertainer – and a very good one at that – but not an actress, so I imagine that a character any deeper than a shallow pond would have been asking too much, so just keep it simple. Of course, if the title character (and leading lady) is flat, nobody around can be any more complex or interesting. Flatness usually goes to the supporting roles, so they can’t make her look like she really is playing second fiddle to Frank.

Thus, I guess I am trying to say that with everything (which isn’t much) that’s been given to the cast, they have pulled it off quite well. Liz Larsen isn’t the inimitable Merman so she doesn’t even try to be; good for her. She gives off humor and spunk, which is all Annie Oakley needs to succeed. Even better than that, Karen Morrow, who scared us all into thinking that she was Merman-in-waiting after 1999’s Anything Goes (and now Angela-Lansbury-in-waiting after Beauty and the Beast) is not Annie. That’s cause enough to go see it. Brian D’Arcy James, a fresh face at the Muny, is excellent as Frank and plays against Liz very well. Together the two carry the evening nicely.

The plot is also as thin as the characters. This isn’t the Muny’s fault, either; it’s just how Irving Berlin et al. wrote the show. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Normally a lighter plot means that there is more emphasis on character (e.g. Hedda Gabler, Sunday in the Park with George), but in the golden era of musicals it also meant that the show was supposed to be good ol’ entertainment. In that era, going to the theatre was a special occasion: people dressed up, went to dinner somewhere nice, and then saw a show. This normally meant that shows were longer, as discussed above, but this one is not, and I cannot help but wonder if this is partly a result of Berlin’s age when he wrote it. When he was approached about writing the music for it he thought that he was too old. He took the job anyway and wrote a marvelous score (including "There’s No Business Like Show Business" and "I Got the Sun in the Morning," both are performed well here) but compared to some other shows even the score seems light – about a dozen songs, including reprises.

Overall the show is a marvelous evening of entertainment. Its one drawback is that it is a product of its time, most notably in its final theme: she can’t do better than Frank with a gun, so she’ll be his “partner” and marry him. Not exactly a post-feminist message, so all you folks who are still mad the Equal Rights Amendment failed had better watch out. Everybody else, however, should do just fine.