Candlelight Pavilion treats audiences to a crowd-pleasing revival of Irving Berlin’s 1948 classic Annie Get Your Gun, the song-and-dance tale of legendary 1880s “cham-peen” sharpshooter Annie Oakley as reimagined by Oscar-Emmy-Tony winner Peter Stone.

 As in Dorothy and Herbert Fields’ original book, the 1999 Stone-scribed revisal tells the fact-inspired tale of unschooled gun whiz Annie’s rocky romance with Wild West Show headliner Frank Butler, renowned as the world’s greatest sharpshooter until Annie gets her gun and shows the handsome, charming lothario that anything he can do, she can do better.

Unfortunately for our hapless heroine, in matters of male-female romance, it turns out a gun ain’t no way to get a feller down on one knee. Then again as Shakespeare put it, the course of true love never did run smooth, and Annie and Frank’s trek towards happiness is one bumpy ride.

 Colorful supporting characters add to the fun, from rival Wild West Show owners Buffalo and Pawnee Bill to Frank’s wisecracking but hopelessly smitten assistant Dolly Tate to her perky younger sister Winnie to Winnie’s boyfriend Tommy to company manager Charlie Davenport to Annie’s preteen siblings to none other than Sioux chief Sitting Bull himself.

All of this adds up to a musical theater classic that along with Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945) helped revolutionize Broadway with songs that didn’t just stop the show, they propelled it.

 Theaters staging Annie Get Your Gun can choose from two licensed versions, the 1966 revival (which left young lovers Tommy and Winnie on the cutting room floor and added a brand new Berlin song “An Old-Fashioned Wedding” to the mix) or the 1996 Broadway revival that kept “Old-Fashioned Wedding” and brought back the ingénue couple but jettisoned the Fields’ book for one deemed more politically correct.

Candlelight opts for the latter, and if it means audiences aren’t quite getting the Broadway original, Stone’s book benefits from comedic repartee of a decidedly more contemporary bent and a treatment of the musical’s Native American characters that may not be perfect but it’s a whole lot better than having them the butt of jokes as in earlier incarnations.

 Gone therefore is “I’m An Indian Too” (for better or worse, you be the judge) and much of Frank’s it’s-okay-to-womanize attitude (“I’m A Bad Bad Man” ends up on the cutting room floor as well). And feminists can celebrate the clever twist Stone puts on Annie’s 11th-hour capitulation to Frank’s male chauvinist needs.

Stone’s reimagining of Annie and Frank’s tale as a Wild West Show-Within-A-Show may not have been necessary, but it does allow Annie Get Your Gun’s signature hit “There’s No Business Like Show Business” to get things going with a bang, and Berlin fans can rejoice that “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly,” “You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun,” “They Say It’s Wonderful,” “Moonshine Lullaby,” and “Anything You Can Do” remain as thrilling as they were when Ethel Merman first belted them out on the Imperial Theatre stage back in ’46.

 James Gruessing directs for Candlelight with requisite pizzazz, aided every step of the way by Janet Renslow’s adaptation of Graciela Daniele and Jeff Calhoun’s ’99 revival choreography, from full-cast show-stoppers like “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “I Got The Sun In The Morning” to Winnie and Tommy’s sprightly “I’ll Share It All With You” and “Who Do You Love, I Hope.”

 Leading lady Jamie Mills is everything you want an Annie to be, feisty and funny and fabulous, and refreshingly believable as a young woman with preteen siblings brought to delightful life by Brooklyn Vizcarra, Alyssa Entz, and Lucca Beene.

Southland favorite Brent Schindele nails Frank’s masculine swagger and effortless charm as he’s done with Oklahoma!’s Curly, The Music Man’s Harold Hill, and White Christmas’s Bob Wallace before him.

Supporting turns are uniformly fine, from Erica Marie Weisz’s bodacious Dolly to Randy Hilton’s larger-than-life Buffalo Bill to Michael Lopez’s wise and winning Chief Sitting Bull to Greg Nicholas’s hilariously harried Charlie Davenport to Jim Skousen’s neatly delineated Mr. Wilson and Pawnee Bill, with Katie Molnar and Jacob Narcy earning song-and-dance cheers as the adorably paired Winnie and Tommy.

 Ensemble members Aria Alekzander, Hana Bible, Josh Kurator, John McGavin, Shelby Monson, Tina Nguyen, Spencer Ty, Daniel J. Reyes, Matthew Ryan, and Andrea Williams shine throughout, whether as townsfolk or Wild West Show performers or tuxedoed gents and debutants or black-wigged Indians, and the entire cast sings splendidly to prerecorded tracks under Douglas Austin’s expert musical direction.

Annie Get Your Gun looks terrific on Mitch Gill and Chuck Ketter’s set, one that (despite some gauze curtain glitches) maintains the revival’s Wild West Show setting while transforming itself from hotel courtyard to train car to ocean steamer to ballroom aided by Aspen Rogers’ snazzy lighting design.

Merrill Grady’s colorful, eclectic costumes (from buckskin to satin-and-lace) and Michon Gruber-Gonzales’s stylishly late-18th century wigs complete the mix.

 Jonathan Daroca is assistant lighting designer. Caleb Shiba is stage manager. Johnny Fletcher plays Frank Butler beginning March 23.

With Irving Berlin providing the songs, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler providing the romance, and Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre providing the musical comedy excitement, Annie Get Your Gun scores an entertainment bulls-eye out Claremont way.

Candlelight Pavilion, 455 W. Foothill Blvd., Claremont.
www.candlelightpavilion.com

–Steven Stanley
March 11, 2018
Photos: James Suter

Tags: Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, Irving Berlin, Los Angeles Theater Review