Annie, What in Blazes Are You Thinking?

    A number of moves could make the 1946 musical “Annie Get Your Gunâ€� a little easier to swallow.

   Annie and Frank’s shooting match, for example, could end in a tie.

   And an absurd number in which Annie sings “I’m an Indian, Tooâ€� could be deep-sixed along with Frank’s ideas about the kind of girl he will marry (she’s supposed to be “as sweet and as pink as a nurseryâ€�). But no. The Mac-Haydn Theatre production seems painfully true to the original. And the audience, much of which very likely saw Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton swapping insults in the opening version on Broadway (along with me) loved it.

   Certainly there’s plenty to love about Mac-Haydn’s performers. Karla Shook, for one, plays Annie Oakley as sharp and vulnerable. Shook, an Equity actor, has a huge voice, wonderful diction and a sweet familiarity with people in the audience who are never more than a couple of feet distant at this theater in the round. Shook can move,  heaven knows she can sing, and she makes us believe she really can shoot the fuzz off a peach.

   Her first great number is “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun,â€� and between Shook and Irving Berlin, this moment is just terrific. Lines like: “You can’t shoot a male, in the tail, like quail,â€� and “A man may be hot, but he’s not, when he’s shot,â€� are hard to beat and make us look more benignly upon Herbert and Dorothy Fields’ dubious, even for its time, book. 

   Jason Whitfield makes a fine Frank Butler: smooth, assured, a little smug, a fellow who knows no one can outshoot him, especially if that someone’s a woman.

   But, of course, she does. With the help and advice of Chief Sitting Bull (who for the character who saves everyone’s bacon puts up with considerable racial ribbing), amiably played by Aaron Komo, the Wild West touring show is saved, Annie gets a chestful of medals and then, finally, blows a shooting match to get her man. And if it were not for their duet, “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,â€� it would have been just about impossible to forgive such a wuss.

“Annie Get Your Gunâ€� runs at The Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, NY,  through June 6.

   518-392-9292.

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