Jane Horrocks’ Annie Gets Young Vic Gun in Oct

As previously tipped (See The Goss, 5 May 2009), the Young Vic is set to mount the first major London revival of Irving Berlin’s 1946 Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun, with Jane Horrocks starring as gunslinger Annie Oakley.

According to the Daily Mail, the revival, directed by Richard Jones, will start performances on 3 October 2009 and will co-star Julian Ovenden, whose musical credits include Merrily We Roll Along and last year’s premiere of Marguerite, for which he was Whatsonstage.com Award nominated.

Set in Ohio in 1912, Annie Get Your Gun focuses on Annie Oakley, the loud-mouthed gunslinger, and Frank Butler, her sharp-shooting rival and love interest, who battle it out for a place in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

Berlin wrote the lyrics and music – with now-classic songs including “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Doing What Comes Naturally” and “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)” – for the musical, which has a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields. In 1950 it was made into a film starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel. The stage musical last ran in the West End at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1992.

Jane Horrocks is best known to musical fans for Little Voice on stage and screen and is currently starring in Wallace Shawn’s play Aunt Dan and Lemon at the Royal Court. She and director Richard Jones worked together at the Young Vic last year on the revival of Brecht’s play The Good Soul of Szechuan.

The revival of a major Broadway musical is an unusual choice for the Young Vic, though it has had successes in recent years with other musical productions, such as Langston Hughes’ Simply Heavenly and the South African take on The Magic Flute, both of which transferred to the West End, as well as its series of community operas. And this month, Che Walker’s new musical comedy Been So Long opens in the theatre’s main space in June.