Peters Scores Bull's-Eye With 'Annie'

She's got 'Sun in the Morning' and the tune at night

New York Daily News Friday 5 March 1999

ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields. Revised by Peter Stone. With Bernadette Peters, Tom Wopat, Ron Holgate, Valerie Wright, Andrew Palermo, Nicole Ruth Snelson, Peter Marx. Directed by Graciela Daniele. At the Marquis Theatre. Tickets, $35-$75. (212) 307-4100.

With musicals, "simple and innocent" usually means "corny and awkward." Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun" is a rare exception. Like its heroine, it takes all the skepticism you can throw at it and gets on with the show.

It lacks most of the qualities we have learned to value in musicals. Irving Berlin's lyrics have neither the cleverness nor the sophistication of, say, Cole Porter. The music is robust and direct rather than sophisticated or subtle.

And the book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields relies on the most familiar plot in the business: Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy. As a version of the Wild West, it makes "Bonanza" look like a scrupulous exercise in historical accuracy.

Yet, for all that, it is almost impossible not to have a good time. If you want a musical to lift your mood rather than change your life, "Annie" works.

Berlin's songs, after all, are still an irresistible force. He had a peculiar genius for making carefully calculated effects seem completely spontaneous.

You may have heard tunes like "There's No Business like Show Business," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "I Got the Sun in the Morning" and "Anything You Can Do" a million times.

But they have such a natural, effortless feel that they seem not so much composed as plucked out of the American air.

And the other great Berlin quality that runs through "Annie" is complete self-confidence. No apologies. No explanations. No ironies.

A single moment of doubt would make the whole thing fall apart. But the key to this production is that the director Graciela Daniele and the stars Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat never let that moment happen.

It's not that they entirely ignore the fact that this is the 1990s. Daniele's direction and Peter Stone's gentle but crucial revisions to the book make two important concessions.

One is that the story is presented as part of the Wild West Show, making the whole question of realism irrelevant. The other is that the relationship between Peters' Annie Oakley and her love and rival Frank Butler is presented, not as the taming of a shrew, but as a fable of sexual equality.

These changes allow both the audience and the performers to enter into the spirit of the story without doubts or reservations. Peters and Tom Wopat, who plays Butler, can go for pure, unapologetic entertainment.

And they revel in it. Peters overdoes her hillbilly accent and mannerisms. But she is so vibrant, so commanding, and so funny that it hardly matters.

With a voice that combines sweetness with power and with her perfect comic timing, Peters makes you forget that the role was written for Ethel Merman and makes it her own.

Wopat, meanwhile, is much more than the "Dukes of Hazzard" beefcake he might be taken for. His warm, rich voice gives him a presence that makes him a credible opponent for Peters.

Most important, they have a real rapport. Especially in "An Old Fashioned Wedding," their jousting seems delightfully unforced and playful.

Throughout the show, from the vivid and witty choreography to the smooth and confident direction, there's a relaxed but irresistible sense of fun.

Being simple but not stupid, innocent but not ignorant is no mean trick. But Peters and Wopat make it look as easy as shooting a bad guy in an old Western.

Original Publication Date: 03/05/1999

New York Post Friday 5 March 1999

"'ANNIE GET YOUR GUN' IS ON TARGET"

By DONALD LYONS

THE revival of "Annie Get Your Gun" has what it takes. Just. It's almost a laboratory demonstration of what a musical needs to be good. It doesn't need a book; it doesn't need sets or atmosphere; it doesn't need choreography; it doesn't need complicated character development.

A good musical needs songs with lilt, power and personality. And it needs stars with lilt, power and personality to put them across. Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat delivering Irving Berlin's score are the very definition of glorious Broadway entertainment.

The show's original 1946 book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields told a fantasy version of the story of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. It has been revised by Peter Stone and is now even more of a "backstager" - that is, a tale of professional entertainers who work on Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. We open with Buffalo Bill (Ron Holgate) singing that self-flattering anthem, "There's No Business Like Show Business."

But the backstage stuff is mere sketchy setting for the piece's central romance between fancy ace sharpshooter Frank Butler and his smart-alecky rustic challenger Annie Oakley.

Torrential red curls spilling down like a honey waterfall, Bernadette Peters is at first a goofy ragamuffin in buckram and denim. After a few weeks in Buffalo Bill's show, she's in stitched satin and white leather and hanging by her knees from a swing.

She blends hilarity and pathos in the sublime "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun." Here's a song you really do walk out singing; with lyrics like "You can't shoot a male in the tail like a quail," you can't stop.

Peters has fun with her numbers, scatting and drawing out and retarding a laugh-rhyme till we hurt. She drops the humorous edge for a sweeping ballad of rapture, "Lost in His Arms." A skilled interpreter of Sondheim, Peters clearly feels at home in the wash of this strangely sad song and gives it a thrilling lift. The production, though, stages the song amid kitschy fog and sickly blue colors.

Tom Wopat brings a beautiful, large voice and a relaxed charm to Frank Butler, attracted to, but upset by Annie's excellence. Genial, gentle, virile, Wopat is a classic Broadway leading man in the John Raitt mold.

He softly expresses his romantic ideal in "The Girl That I Marry" and Peters reprises a few verses in pained awareness of her inadequacy to his dream. Later, he and a chorus of company cowboys get a very funny and choreographically energized number, "My Defenses Are Down."

Alas, the direction by Graciela Daniele and the choreography by Daniele and Jeff Calhoun are as threadbare and trite as the sets by Tony Walton.

And the politically correct fussing with the old libretto is annoying. The song "I'm an Indian Too" has been eliminated, and a young Indian (Andrew Palermo) has been upgraded to the status of romantic ingenue. Annie herself is a champion of Indians and a budding feminist. Instead of throwing the final contest with Frank in order to win his heart, she enacts a parody of womanly submission.

The old "Annie" book is certainly no sacred artifact, but Peter Stone's nervous multi-culti-feminist updating can get pretty silly. Audiences are hipper than timorous Broadway maestros give them credit for being. And besides, Berlin's wise lyrics anticipate and solve all these problems in the first place.

But nothing matters when Peters and Wopat, those two stellar presences - the sun in the morning and the moon at night, as a song in this very show puts it - are front and center and illuminating the magic of Irving Berlin.

"Annie Get Your Gun" at the Marquis, 1535 Broadway, at 45th Street. Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields as revised by Peter Stone. With Bernadette Peters, Tom Wopat. Direction by Graciela Daniele; choreography by Daniele and Jeff Calhoun.