As most of us already know, referring to our Native American populations as Indians is an unforgiveable breach of liberal-minded sensitivity and political correctness. Some geezers among us may have played cowboys-and-Indians in our youth, but we know better now. We regard kids who would engage in such atrocities today as backwards backwoods boneheads and feel comforted by our enlightenment.
Some institutions like the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians have escaped this rampant orthodoxy, but Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun has succumbed to the prevailing cultural revisionism. If you venture into Halton Theater, where CPCC Summer Theatre launched its 35th season, you will not be affronted by the sight of Annie Oakley patting the flat of her hand to her mouth and singing “I’m an Indian, Too.”
I went to the purified Annie with more than a little curiosity — and trepidation — but I came away satisfied that Berlin, the man who gave us “God Bless America,” wasn’t spinning in his grave. There are some weaknesses, to be sure, in this Peter Stone revision. Fresh songs are injected into the score from the Berlin inventory to replace discontinued items, but they aren’t top-drawer goods — and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” is taken off the shelf no fewer than three times in the first act.
Stone’s political revisionism isn’t virulent. After all, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill are renowned historical figures who lived long before the Native American label was a gleam in some Democrat’s eye. You won’t hearing the word Indian tossed casually at the great Chief Sitting Bull, but there’s no alternative when we’re dealing with the half-breed in the cast.
Not everyone will like the new narrative frame that encases the refurbished musical. With Billy Ensley playing the dual role of Charlie Davenport, the Wild West Show promoter, and our makeshift stage manager/narrator — a gig ridiculously beneath Ensley’s capabilities — the effect is rather intriguing. It also serves as a lame excuse for director Tom Hollis to indulge in cheapjack sets and clumsy scene changes. With Ensley counting off the scene numbers, those box movers are part of the action!
Hollis is even more successful with Annie, widening the arc between her initial rusticity and her ultimate celebrity. Here he is in cahoots with costume designer Annie Laurie Wheat, who has Oakley looking like a backwoods Deliverance Neanderthal when we first see her.
Susan Roberts Knowlson takes to this rad deglamorization as if this were the role of a lifetime. So it is — for her. Fergit about that dadgum showbiz anthem, in Roberts’ hands, “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly” and “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun” become showstoppers of equal stature. There’s additional bounty for Patrick Ratchford to get his velvety tonsils around as Frank Butler, the sharpshootin’ champeen object of Annie’s idolatry.
Just a tad too aloof here and there, Ratchford croons charmingly on “The Girl That I Marry” and “My Defenses Are Down.” And omigosh, has there even been a better suite of duets than these classic Oakley-Butler shootouts? All are intact, and any one of them — “They Say It’s Wonderful,” “An Old-Fashioned Wedding,” or the incomparable “Anything You Can Do” — could keep you humming.
The whole shooting match is as effervescent and captivating as ever. With no politically incorrect contaminants!
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2008.
