Review: Annie Get Your Gun
ROISIN KIBERD: ‘Solidly entertaining and delivered with relish, if you like the sound of men in mascara and cowboy hats’
Tuesday 9th – Saturday 20th, 7.45 with matinees at 2.30 on Saturdays at The ADC Theatre. £6-10.
Directed by Ben Kavanagh.
There's no people like show people. Except when they're students, pretending to be show people. Pale, English students barely out of their teens, with a joke shop wardrobe and a limited props budget to work with. Somehow working to summon the spirit of the American Wild West.
I'm not the biggest fan of musicals. There's something very false about them, whether it’s the tuneless schlocky romantic songs, the preachy sentiment or the three-hour fixed grins of chorus members. But what can lift them out of terminal tackiness and boredom is the spirit and energy people willingly put into such productions. Where production values and showbiz experience fail, spirit will sometimes pull them through. And Annie Get Your Gun has this spirit in spades.
Sleepier audience members were shocked into waking by the sound effects; this play contains more full-volume gunshot blasts than a 2002-era Nas record. Sitting in the second row I wondered if my eardrums would survive each time Annie reached for the titular shotgun. Similarly camp, kitschy design is ideal for a musical like this one, but the bizarre and poorly-painted 'Big Top' backdrop (complete with an oddly anatomical opening in its centre) seemed shoddy and out of place.
Still it's solidly entertaining and delivered with relish, if you like the sound of men in mascara and cowboy hats, musical standards like 'Anything You Can Do', and a half-hearted 'feminist' message.
2.5/5 stars
Annie Get Your Gun, ADC Theatre 9-20th March, 7.45