Review: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, Union Theatre

"There's No Business Like Show Business" - a sentiment for which many may well be grateful. But we're not in the cynical 1970s, we're in the late 1940s, with the world weary of war (if not, evidently, of guns) and looking for the compensations of entertainment, comedy and romance. Dorothy Fields, with her family background in vaudeville and Irving Berlin, halfway through a career pretty much writing the American Songbook, knew that and delivered schmaltzy, sentimental, sensationally successful Annie Get Your Gun to Broadway. The punters rolled in - they still do today and it's crystal clear to see why.

Buffalo Bill is drumming up interest in his travelling Wild West show with crack shot, Frank Butler, offering a prize to anyone who can out shoot him. Up steps Annie Oakley, a ballsy out-of-towner, who is an ace shot herself, but not taken seriously in the Midwest of the late 19th century. Sure enough, she beats his score and they find out that Cupid isn't bad with his aim either. Not without a tiff or two along the way, they go on to live happily ever after - okay, a spoiler, but you knew that didn't you? It's all based loosely on a true story (with the emphasis on loose rather than true).

Presented in its 1999 version (Peter Stone having excised the more egregious references to "Indians" from Fields' book and Berlin's songs), we get the signature tune as the first shot across our bows - and what a song it is - then hit after hit as Berlin, at the height of his powers, never lets up.

Is there a bit of his own life (a Jewish immigrant working in a foreign language who never learned to read music) in "Doin' What Comes Naturally", a celebration of folks not blessed with formal education? Is there some foreshadowing of the work of Stephen Sondheim in "You Can't Get A Man With A Gun" with its ever so clever internal rhymes (I all but stood to applaud when "practice" was rhymed with "cactus"!)? And "Anything You Can Do" would fit into plenty of Gilbert and Sullivan operas - I expect they both chuckled from on high when they heard that one float up to the Composers Quarter in the heavens.

Wondrous songs and, sung without mics, up close, it's a real treat to hear these classics, as they were intended to be heard, in the context of the show.

Gemma Maclean gives Annie plenty of insecure bolshiness early on, but, as she meets with success, tours Europe and learns to read and write, she mellows into a more orthodox leading lady - she rocks a bias cut, silk taffeta dress too. Blair Robertson sings well enough, but I never quite believed in him as the star turn in Buffalo Bill's show - he's a little too stiff and one-paced and too willing to show his insecurity for me. The alpha female needs an alpha male!

Director Kirk Jameson and choreographer Ste Clough get plenty out of the support cast, in which Lawrence Guntert navigates the tricky part of Chief Sitting Bull without any missteps and Georgia Conlan and Dominic Harbison are sweetly stuck on each other in a romantic side plot.

There are times when both music and singing feels a little underpowered ("Broadway" keeps muscling into one's mind's eye) but the songs are so good that it barely matters. If the props and scenery are a little undercooked too (even allowing for the "show within a show" device used in the 1999 version), well, nobody leaves a theatre singing the scenery do they?

"Yesterday they told you you would not go far, that night you open and there you are
Next day on your dressing room they've hung a star, let's go on with the show!!"

Not a bad thought for these troubled times eh?

Annie Get Your Gun continues at the Union Theatre until 17 June.