Theater Review : A Pleasant but Tame ‘Annie’

“Annie Get Your Gun” is not an ideal vehicle for pint-sized Cathy Rigby, but she is starring in a credible and good-looking production of the classic 1946 Irving Berlin musical anyway.

Rigby toured the country with the show in 1993, and she and her producing partner and husband, Tom McCoy, brought their politically corrected version of the musical home to the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, opening over the weekend. The point is not that Rigby is too small to play Annie Oakley, the illiterate country ragamuffin who can “shoot the fuzz off a peach” and becomes the star of Buffalo Bill’s 1884 traveling Wild West Show. Oakley was 5 feet tall, just about the size of the former Olympic gymnast. But when Berlin wrote the music and lyrics for this, his biggest Broadway hit, he wrote them for Ethel Merman, the gutsy belter who ripped into songs and showed a gusto for life, and for holding the stage, in every note.

Rigby has a pleasing voice, as anyone who saw her in “Peter Pan” can attest. She doesn’t rip into the songs, but she has her own spunk and sings them well, particularly “Moonshine Lullaby,” which Merman sang to the small children tucked into their stage beds as if it were “Reveille.” But in the songs that Berlin wrote to show off his heroine’s appetite for living, songs such as “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly,” “Anything You Can Do,” and, particularly, “I Got the Sun in the Morning,” Rigby shows only a small, measured range of emotion; she is pleasant rather than passionate, and she is unchanging in song to song, and scene to scene.

Her dancing skills are modest, and Michael Lichtefeld’s stock choreography is not able to hide that fact. Lichtefeld’s best work is in a new number devised by this production called “Indian Ceremonial,” a sober but not too sober recreation of a Sioux dance that marks Annie’s acceptance into the tribe. This replaces Berlin’s intentionally goofy “I’m an Indian Too” with its apparently unacceptable lyrics (“Just like Rising Moon/Falling Pants/Running Nose/Like those Indians/I’m an Indian too/A Sioux/A Sioux. . . .”). Even light and goofy musicals such as “Annie Get Your Gun” can offer a complete reality, and in this production that reality is not thoroughly sustained by director Frank Lombardi. For instance, why does a proper town elder spurn a tarty lady and then instantly turn into a leech when he sees Annie Oakley? Even these tiny details need to make sense.

Similarly, when Buffalo Bill (Erick Devine) and his slick barker Charlie Davenport (Paul V. Ames) try to convince Annie to join their show, they sing the entertainer’s anthem, “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and they are reluctantly joined by the sharpshooter Frank Butler (Perry Stephens), who is jealous of Annie’s skill. For no discernible reason, Frank switches in the middle of the song from dissuading Annie to joining in the general enthusiasm, and it is left up to the audience to decide why that might be.

Stephens, handsome in a Tom Selleck way and a solid singer, wrestles believably with the musical’s sole complexity: a battle of the sexes that truly tests the hero’s manliness. If he is to marry the woman he loves, Frank must face the fact that Annie is a far better shot than he will ever be. This production insists on Frank’s recognition of Annie’s superiority without ever being strident.

Heidi Landesman and Joel Reynolds’ delightful sets from the 1993 tour are a rare example of design that doesn’t look expensive but doesn’t look cheap. She borrows from authentic posters and drawings of the period but keeps it whimsical. She also supplies a lovely scrim effect for a ship pulling into a foggy Manhattan. Catherine Zuber’s costumes, particularly the splendid second-act gowns, are terrific.

The comedy is uneven. Ames, Devine and Mauricio Bustamante as Sitting Bull are all able clowns, yet several obvious punchlines land with a dull thud. As Dolly, Annie’s sometimes nemesis, Ellen Harvey pushes.

For her part, Rigby never pushes, and she’s plucky and likable throughout. Consequently, this is an enjoyable “Annie,” a credible one, but it is uneven and lacks the kind of rigorous rethinking that would make it a definitive revival.

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“Annie Get Your Gun,”

La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., Tuesday-Saturday 8 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday 2:30 p.m.; next Sunday, June 23, 7:30 p.m. Ends June 23. $32. (714) 994-6310, (310) 944-9801. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Paul V. Ames: Charlie Davenport

Ellen Harvey: Dolly Tate

Hank Wilson: Pawnee Bill

Perry Stephens: Frank Butler

Cathy Rigby: Annie Oakley

Erick Devine: Buffalo Bill

Mauricio Bustamante: Chief Sitting Bull

With: Marty McDonough, Jacob Chase, Kaitlin McCoy, Ashley Day, Kari Floberg, Robert Lyon Barker, Craig Cady, Hank Wilson, Joe Bowerman, Alison Beatty, Anthony Kocal, Eric Gunhus, Fred Haug, Cathy Susan Pyles, Rachelle Ottley, Robert Lyon Barker, Kim Arnett, Ray Garcia, Eddie Marco, Buck Mason, Sharon Moore, Karen Nowicki, Michelle Shaw, Leslie Stamper.

A production of La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and McCoy/Rigby Entertainment. Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields. Directed by Frank Lombardi. Originally conceived and directed by Susan H. Schulman. Sets Heidi Landesman/Joel Reynolds. Costumes Catherine Zuber. Lights Jacqueline Jones Watson. Sound Julie Ferrin. Technical directors Greg Little/Robert Bolton. Hair Melanie Smith. Orchestrations Robert Russell Bennet, Michael Gibson, Brian W. Tidwell. Choreographer Michael Lichtefeld. Musical director Dennis Castellano.