"Get that snake off stage!" the director bellows, as Annie Oakley hangs upside-down on a ladder, shooting out six balloons in her signature, show-stopping, super star act.
"You bring him on after the trick is over!" Terry Sands corrects as a sheepish junior cowboy quickly retracts his performing python.
Performing python?
What on earth is going on is Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, opening in the charm of the Annisquam Village Hall, as the Village Players rustle up a big dose of the old West in "Annie Get Your Gun" through six shows, running Tuesday night through next Sunday.
Director Terry Sands and his producing theater partner Mary Curtis have assembled a vigorous cast of indians, cowboys and folks from our past: jugglers, wrestlers, cowboy clowns and sharpshooters.
This year's show marks Sands' 20th year as village theater mogul and he picked a classic. "Annie Get Your Gun" is no johnny-come-lately copycat musical. It was born in 1946 and featured belter Ethel Merman in the title role, singing classics "No Business like Show Business," "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better," and "Moonshine Lullaby" among other ear catching toons.
It is full of double-entendres, slapstick, sight gags and rollicking group numbers. It is an amazing collaboration between Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein who began the show, only to turn it over to Irving Berlin for the final version. The songs are pithy, direct, sassy and classic.
This year's cast is a slightly different take on the AVP formula. Usually, the emphasis is on the kids and the women to drive the shows, with lots of cute group scenes, dancing — and soft "awwww" moments, with elegant, young warblers supporting polite, earnest men in patient and measured performances.
This year's show has all of the "awww" and the cute kiddie group scenes, songs and dancing alright, but there is a cadre of male theater vets who wrap around the core of the show like a belt — a belt of whisky, that is — driving the show's energy level and comic pace straight in and out of songs and plot turns.
Strong male performers, strong singers and funnymen make the regular, softer fare even yummier as the gals rise right out of the heap of male energy and take the show to a rousing level.
Victoria Fortune is marvelous as Annie. Innocent but wise, sassy but shy, a crooner and a belter, Victoria is as cute and accomplished an Annie as you could ask for. She is comically matched by veteran Larry Cook whose completely down-to-earth, almost Jack Benny manner is a terrific counter point to all the impish actions of the upstart star shooter and her backwoods siblings. Cook's fine baritone is made for the Berlin/Rogers score.
The plays principal men provide the foil for Cook's lead, Frank Butler. The characters of Buffalo Bill (Pharrel Wener), Charlie Davenport, (B.B.'s general manager — played by me), rival Pawnee Bill (Dominic Parry), Tommy (David Cluett), hotel owner Mr. Wilson (Michael English) and especially the show-stealing Keith McCarthy as the legendary chief Sitting Bull all careen, scheme and sing their way into a funny, effective frame for the show's love bird couples.
Even the stage manager, Andrew Rivenbark, belts out a couple of songs during his duties
All this strong male support makes Annie and her fellow gal leads, Dolly Tate (Deb Michels) and little sister Winnie (superb singer Ariel Sargent) rise out of the scrum as a welcome, reasonable, common sense point of view. But in the meantime. there's plenty of shooting, kissing, guffawing, tumbling, dancing, show-stopping belting, juggling, clowning, yee-haw-ing, whip cracking, and basketfulls of puns, jokes and tricks. It's a funny, strong show with a funny, strong cast.
Annisquam Village Players boasts one of the oldest theater traditions in the country, if not the oldest. This production is well worth the trip to one of Gloucester's crown jewels.
You'll exit humming songs you thought you'd forgotten and — who knows — maybe you'll go home and shoot some cans off'a the back fence.
But you won't stop humming that tune in your head while yer shootin,' pard'ner.
Gordon Baird is a local actor and musician, co-founder of Musician magazine, host of "Gloucester Chicken Shack" cable TV show — and, yes, plays the role of Charlie Davenport in the Annisquam Village Players' production of "Annie Get Your Gun."
