‘Annie Get Your Gun’ opens Friday at Rogers City Theater
The Rogers City Community Theatre is proud to announce “Annie Get Your Gun” which hits the stage at the Rogers City Theater this Friday.
The production marks the beginning of the 2013 season and will run this weekend and next weekend. Show times are Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at the theater and Presque Isle Newspapers and at the door on the day of the show.
“Annie Get Your Gun” is a musical with a great story, hit after hit of Irvin Berlin’s beloved songs with a dazzling spectacle that can’t help but please and delight the audience.
A love of showmanship is built into Berlin’s 1946 Broadway hit based loosely on real-life sharpshooters Annie Oakley (Heather Nordenbrock) and Frank Butler (Ed Perrault). The business that boasts there’s no business like it provides the setting and fuels the plot. With Buffalo Bill Cody (Lawrence Anderson), the sly hustler who packaged the American West into a rootin’-tootin’, ridin and shootin’ extravaganza, recruiting hayseed sharpshooter Annie Oakley to join his touring Wild West spectacular, a move that takes dead aim at the ego of the show’s star marksman, Frank Butler.
Annie and Frank jostle for the spotlight as well as the title of World’s Best Shot, even as they lose their hearts to each other. Almost every scene in Herbert and Dorothy Field’s book (revised by Peter Stone) offers some commentary on the allure of the stage and the life that goes with it, even with all its endless travels and travails, financial woes and puffed-up egos. As the deadeye heroine Annie soon learns, once the curtain rises, all the tribulations and calamities melt away and you feel more alive onstage than anywhere else.
Berlin’s rule for a good musical phrase was “easy to sing, easy to say, easy to remember and applicable to everyday events.” Berlin was a man who stuck to his own advice. His tunes and lyrics have embedded themselves into the public’s consciousness.
“Annie Get Your Gun” contains a mind-boggling array of beloved and delightful as ever standards including: “Doin’ What Comes Naturally,” “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun,” “Moonshine Lullaby,” “An Old-Fashioned Wedding,” “Anything You Can Do” and the song that became the virtual anthem of the entertainment industry, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” It is classic Broadway musical theatre at its best; exciting, vibrant, tuneful, chock-full of laughs, altogether a wonderful experience to be remembered and cherished f
So saddle up and git on over to the Rogers City Theater for their spring production of “Annie Get Your Gun.” You and yours will be mighty glad iffen ya do.
Directed by Karl W. Heidemann the show is being presented through special arrangement with R&H Theatricals. Cast members are Anderson, Lisa Coolman, Nicole Grulke, Bradley Heidemann, Charlotte Heidemann, Elaine Heidemann, Karl W. Heidemann, Salena Heidemann, Jeff Kuznicki, Mary Lyon, Allison Marx, Mike Marx, Dave Miller, Heather Nordenbrock, Colby Nordenbrock, Lilly Nordenbrock, Denise Perrault, Ed Perrault and Bob Starnes.
Heather Nordenbrock serves as the music director and principal choreographer. Meghan Riordan is the assistant director and additional choreography director. Val Schalk is in charge of costumes, Bill Halsey is running the sound and Laura Weber is running the lights.