Annie, Get Your Gun

The other night, my mother and I had tickets to the second of our three shows at the Benedum this summer. It was the musical based on the life of Annie Oakley, Annie Get Your Gun. First, we had a nice treat as Beth decided to join us; all it took was a trip over to the box office on my lunch break to procure a $12 student ticket for her with my UT student ID. We went to dinner at the Six Penn Kitchen. This place is pretty good, but my family eats there wayyyyyy too often. I just had dinner there last Friday night with my mom and dad! There are tons of good places to try within a few blocks of the theatre, but you know our family; we stick to what we like. I had the Buffalo Chicken Mac'n'Cheese, which was very good.

We then headed over to the theatre. I am annoyed to now find out that I think they made us sit in the wrong seats. Well, I can say this: the tickets for the first two shows were the same section, but for Mame we were 7 rows from the stage, and for this one we were in the first balcony. This is annoying because we paid to sit lower. It wasn't that big of a deal I guess, as Beth was able to come sit with us in our seats.

I don't know if anyone has ever seen this show, but it's really weird. The story is peculiar: Annie Oakley challenges the world's best shooter, beats him, falls in love with him, runs him off because she's better, then gets him back. The actress playing Annie was fantastic; she had a great voice, she was funny, and she played the country-girl gone good role pretty well. Everyone else was fine too.

But, unless it's a star like Ashley Parker Angel (who mom and I happened to see as Link in Hairspray--on Broadway!) it doesn't matter that much who it is. Musicals come down to two things - singing and dancing. The songs have to be memorable, and the choreography has to be big. So, when I found out the first number of the show (and its two reprisals) was the Broadway standard "There's No Business Like Show Business", I was expecting a lot. To be honest, this number disappointed me. I can't help but be bothered by the melody; the word "business" in the refrain is sung at the same note, but I think it needs to drop each time. I'm not huge into reading music and stuff so I can't explain it better than that. Anyway, that number was a disappointment to me, as was the entire first act.

However, the second act was superb! There were at least 2 numbers that met my criteria for a good musical. The first was "Who Do You Love, I Hope", which was sung by two minor characters. This is a necessity, I think, for musicals in the beginning of the second act. It's a bit of a breather from the story (which, because it's a musical, probably isn't great) and it elevates the rest of the cast a bit. The second was the other famous song from this show, "Anything You Can Do". The actors really made this song happen well. I really thought I sensed the competitive nature of their relationship by the way they spat challenges at each other ("Anything you can say, I can say faster..."). Very entertaining, to say the least.

In the end, of course Annie and Frank end up together. My rating would be 2.5 stars out of 4. I think I liked it better than Mame. The third show, in less than two weeks, is West Side Story, which has been a source of controversy my whole post-high school life. More on that later.

To finish, I'd like to invite everyone to take in the shows at the Benedum. There is a lot of good stuff coming through in the next year, including at least four blockbusters - Wicked, Jersey Boys, Spring Awakening, and A Chorus Line. For various reasons, the arts are dying in this world, and it is something that our society simply cannot live without. There are always stories in the Post-Gazette about how the CLO loses money every year. Will you going to one show stem the tide? No, but good word of mouth has never hurt a product in the previous history of capitalism before.