Country music star/actor Billy Ray Cyrus has been cast opposite the previously-announced Louise Pitre in a staged concert version of Irving Berlin's classic Annie Get Your Gun. The two will respectively play Frank Butler and Annie Oakley in the musical, which opens at Toronto's Massey Hall on August 1st for a run through August 20th.
Annie Get Your Gun will be directed and choreographed by Donna Feore, and Jonathan Wilson, Sandy Winsby, William Merasty, Sandra Caldwel, and Avery Saltzman will be featured in the cast. Somewhat scaled down, Annie Get Your Gun
will feature an onstage 25-piece orchestra (similar to that used in
stagings at Encores! and conducted by Rick Fox). Although lights and
costumes will be present, scenery will be dispensed with.Cyrus will replace Paul Brandt as Frank; the latter had previously been scheduled to play the macho sharpshooter whose defenses fall down when he meets backwoods gunslinger Annie. Cyrus is best known as a country star whose hit "Achy Breaky Heart" topped charts in 1992. He has since gone on to appear in a number of films, such as Wish You Were Dead, Mulholland Drive and Radical Jack. He starred in the title role of the 2001 TV series "Doc," as well.
Pitre originated the role of Donna in Mamma Mia!on Broadway; she
has also performed the role in the touring company and in the Canadian
production. Nominated for a 2002 Best Actress in a Musical Tony, she
also received the Dora Mavor Moore Award (the Toronto equivalent of the
Tonys), the San Francisco Critics Circle Award and the U.S. National
Broadway Award for her performance. Other theatre credits include Piaf,
Les Miserables, And the World Goes Round, I Love You, You're Perfect,
Now Change, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the world premiere production of the late Cy Coleman's The Great Ostrovsky. Annie Get Your Gun, which
opened on May 16, 1946 to run for 1147 performances with Ethel Merman in the title role,
was most recently revived (with a heavily revised book) in 1999 with
Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat; Peters won her second Tony for her
performance as Annie.