Pitre to Play Annie Oakley in Toronto This Summer

By: Apr. 13, 2005
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  Written by Maya Cantu

Louise Pitre will play the title role in a Toronto production of Annie Get Your Gun.

The throaty Canadian star has signed onto the classic Irving Berlin musical for a month-long summer run at Toronto's Massey Hall. While specific dates and ticket prices have not yet been announced, the show will open in early August. Country music star Paul Brandt will be the Frank Butler to Pitre's Annie Oakley.

Donna Feore is set to direct and choreograph the production, which will be 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.

Pitre is most famous for having originated the role of Donna on Broadway in the smash ABBA musical Mamma Mia!; 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. A recording artist too, Pitre's two solo CDs are entitled "Songs My Mother Taught Me" and "All My Life Has Led to This." More info can be found on Pitre at http://www.louisepitre.com

The sharpshooting musical romance Annie Get Your Gun opened on May 16, 1946 to run for 1147 performances. Directed by Joshua Logan, the show starred Ethel Merman as Annie and Ray Middleton as Frank. Merman also headlined a 1966 Lincoln Center revival. The show 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.

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