New Musical in Manhattan

Annie Get Your Gun (music & lyrics by Irving Berlin; book by Herbert & Dorothy Fields; produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II) is a great big follow-the-formula, fetch-the-crowd musical. It bothers with nothing artistic or bizarre. It involves almost as many people as were needed to build the Pyramids, and works the most important of them almost as hard. Star, whip and wheelhorse of Annie is Ethel Merman.

Actress Merman plays Annie Oakley, the sharpshooting whiz of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show--and the gal whose name became a synonym (because they are punched with holes) for complimentary theater tickets. An illiterate Ohio lass performing miracles with a squirrel rifle, she is snapped up by Buffalo Bill, falls in love with the male sharpshooter of the troupe (Ray Middleton). Unfortunately for his affections, she shoots better than he does. But in good time Cupid's bow wins out over Annie's gun.

With a comedy personality that gets better from show to show, Actress Merman gets huffy, turns toughie, picks a laugh off a down-crashing joke at 100 yards. With a voice that seems trying to establish communication with Mars, she blares out, incomparably, a series of brisk Irving Berlin ditties (best: You Can't Get a Man with a Gun) and a couple of love songs, too.

Irving Berlin has written more tuneful music in his time; the dances are lively but not spectacular; the book is much like April weather. But with Merman to pace it, Annie should run for two years.

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