Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic
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Lots of humming-for-days-in-your-head songs come from musicals without people realising it, and 'Annie Get your Gun' has more than its fair share. And the Young Vic's inventive new production, put together by Richard Jones, is certain proof that 'There's No Business Like Show Business'.
This song, and the rest of the score, sound even better belted out of the tiny, slightly magical frame that is Jane Horrocks. You might know her as Bubble from AbFab, or the star of 'Little Voice', but in this quite intimate space she's definitely ALL western hick pro-shot Annie Oakley, and an absolute miniature powder-keg-darling with it. Annie is usually played like a shoulder-padded brass-ball-breaker who intimidates men with her skill, but Horrocks plays her as a grubby hill-billy, disappointed that she lacks the 'pink and white' charms men look for in a girl and laments 'You Can't Get a Man with a Gun' - "And you can't shoot a male/ In the tail like a quail/ Oh you can't get a man with a gun." - even though she's comfortable telling the assembled gathering in the diner that she's fine at: 'Doin' What Comes Natur'lly'.
The director and cast had rich material in Irving Berlin's witty western era musical of boy meets girl-who-can-shoot-better-than-he-can. 'But anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you.' The chorus is a strong set of characters; and the wooden 1940s update set is clever and imaginative - relative simplicity compared to some of the revolving stages you see in the West End - and is augmented with some clever and endearing tricks: playing with the difference in height of the leading couple, the old travelling conveyor belt trick for on stage train or boat travel, and a mini Lady Liberty letting you know you're coming into New York harbour.
There's also a cleverly done multimedia 'reel' over the overture helping to set the scene of 1940s nostalgia for the 'golden' wild west – which is how this production manages to get over a couple of the politically incorrect twists this story takes: it's a spoiler, but Annie has to miss her mark in order to win the love she's looking for, and there's some Native American characters in it who 'fit' the racial stereotype of the 40s but would offend today's audiences if not put in context. But Jones makes it all better with a toe-tappingly inclusive rendition of 'I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night', reminding the audience, as all good musicals should, that what's really important is love, family and a bit of adventure: 'They Say It's Wonderful'.
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59517 - 2023-01-20 00:26:29