★★★★☆
This show should really be called Annie Gets Her Man but it is great fun nonetheless. The first thing we hear is the gentle nicker of a horse and then, wham, the stage is filled with the entire company of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, wearing so much silver fringe that it might be illegal, belting out There’s No Business Like Show Business, an earworm still playing in my head as I write.
Of course, it’s not the first time Annie has been to Sheffield.
Apparently the real Annie, pretty and petite, and a deadly shot, came here with the original Wild West show in 1892, complete with an entourage of 600 Native Americans, 500 horses and dozens of cowboys. By then, the girl given the name Little Sure Shot by the Sioux chief Sitting Bull was the equivalent of a global rock star.
This Irving Berlin 1946 musical is pure entertainment, with a hit factory of songs, including the wonderful Anything You Can Do, and there is nowhere to hide with the Crucible’s unforgiving thrust stage. This is a traditional production and there is nothing edgy here but the choreography by Alistair David, a mix of folk and ballet, with a bit of pure showbiz thrown in, is intriguing, making it much more interesting to watch than your average hootenanny.
Anna-Jane Casey makes for a gutsy, glorious Annie, managing to carry off the part’s strange mix of a young woman who is both a ruthless competitive sharpshooter and desperately in love with fellow sure-shot Frank Butler, played with manly bonhomie by Ben Lewis. Frank wants her to be his “assistant” but she has other ideas (bull’s-eye!).
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This musical floats on energy, and both Casey and Lewis have more than enough to carry it off. Lauren Hall, in the part of Winnie Tate, a young woman defying her older sister to marry her true love, who is half Native American, is a star in the making. There are some weak links in the cast, however, and Paul Foster, the director, needs to make sure the pace doesn’t slow to something worryingly close to leisurely at times.
The set, by Laura Hopkins, is minimalist, the Wild West theme taken care of by a backdrop of what amounts to a large rock in front of a small swing. It feels a bit tick-box, though she is right to leave the stage mostly free for the song and dance spectaculars, the ensemble’s extravagant costumes swishing and swirling, while the songs soar. Win, lose or draw? Win-win, I think.
Box office: 0114 249 6000, to January 21