Community Corner
"Annie Get Your Gun"
St. Anthony’s Parish Players shoot-it-up with “Annie Get Your Gun.”
Irving Berlin was fresh from a patriotic three year stint with his revue “This is the Army”. He wasn’t sure that his unique style was still in vogue. Rodgers & Hammerstein had created a musical revolution with “Oklahoma”! But Rodgers & Hammerstein suggested that Berlin borrow the script for “Annie Oakley”, a property they were planning to produce, look it over and see if he couldn't come up with a tune or two. Berlin just happened to bubble over with ideas, and the rest is history. “Annie Get Your Gun” opened in 1946 and was a smash from the first. The musical has seen several revivals in recent years, all of them great successes.
"Berlin's greatest achievement in the theater," wrote New York Post critic Clive Barnes about the '99 revival, "should carry “Annie Get Your Gun” happily into the next century and a bit beyond. It will always be a musical for the ages, one of the Broadway theater's enduring triumphs."