DALTON, Mass. — The Apollonian Players will present the musical "Annie Get Your Gun" featuring the musical score of Irving Berlin.

 

The first showing is Friday night, April 1, at 7 p.m. There is also a matinee at 1 on Saturday, and another showing at 7 on Saturday night at Wahconah Regional High School.

 

Ticket prices are $8 for students and senior citizens and $10 for adults. Tickets may be purchased at the door. Wahconah Regional High School is located at 150 Windsor Road.

 

The musical is based on the love story of sharpshooters Annie Oakley and Frank Butler that scored a bulls-eye when it returned to Broadway in 1999 starring Bernadette Peters and sporting a revised libretto by Tony, Oscar and Emmy winner Peter Stone. Stone reshaped the 1946 book the musical is based on to create a Wild West show-within-a-show. As Newsday reported, Stone's revisions' "are sweetly ingenious, and the show is a dream."

 

Stone added a secondary romance between the younger sister of Frank's bothersome assistant Dolly, and a boy who is (to Dolly's horror) part Native American. "The book has been updated in ways that pass PC muster," reported Time Magazine, "without losing all the fun."

 

Joined to the new book, of course, is the Irving Berlin score, featuring hit after hit after hit. 

 

"Irving Berlin's greatest achievement in the theater," wrote the New York Post, "will always be a musical for the ages, one of the Broadway Theater's enduring triumphs." The music features the well known "Anything You Can Do I can Do Better."

 

The cast features 36 Central Berkshire School District students in the seventh through 12th grades.

 

Leading the troupe as Annie Oakley is senior Catie May with junior Dan Brainerd as Frank Butler. Some of the other major characters include: Buffalo Bill Cody (Devon Mikaniewicz), Dolly Tate (Selena Schilling), Tommy Keeler (Shea McIlquham), Winnie Tate (Brooklyn Pratt), Charlie Davenport (Quincy Heon), Foster Wilson (Holden Nelson), Chief Sitting Bull (Haley Sickell), Annie's little siblings Jessie (Annie Cramer), Nellie, (Anna Duquette), Little Jake (Anthony Coviello), Pawnee Bill (Jaryd Massaro), Mrs. Slyvia Potter-Porter (Hannah Rogers), Mrs. Schuyler Adams (Morgan Therrien).

 

Rounding out the ensemble are the "Cowgirls" Colette Basiliere, Julia Drury, Rachel Fox, Olivia Furlong, Mikel Lamont, Aleksandra Tsangarides, Jenna Topping, and Abby White, and the frolicsome "Roustabouts": Shayne Haley, Maddie Heon, Jayde MacWilliams, Grace Moriarty, Avery Price,  Lexi Schultz, Aviva Skoblow, Zack Turner, and Avery Westervelt.

 

The show is under the direction of Pamela Fortlage-Gold and Liz Daniels, with Ann-Marie Desautelle as musical director and Vickie Hornstein as choreographer.