Annie Get Your Gun

Irving Berlin's musical tale of romance and sharp shootin' presents a few problems for the modern director, with its outdated racial and sexual politics (both women and Native Americans get a pretty raw deal in Herbert and Dorothy Fields's book). Still, it's difficult to imagine a more misguided approach than director Richard Jones's for this charmless revival.

An opening film sequence of cacti, geysers and grizzlies, all gazed at in wonderment by two children dressed up as a miniature cowboy and an Indian, archly sets the Wild West scene; the design, by Ultz, is an elongated letterbox that places ludicrous restrictions on movement, and relocates the late nineteenth-century action in the period of the musical's first appearance, the 1940s.

Jane Horrocks's winsome waif of an Annie Oakley makes her first appearance in a grubby Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and gives a performance of cartoonish comic energy and somewhat erratic vocals. Her beefcake love interest and gun-toting rival, Frank, gets a beautifully sung, if somewhat bland, portrayal by Julian Ovenden. But though there are some classic numbers here - 'There's No Business Like Show Business', 'Doin' What Comes Naturally', 'Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better' - they are short-changed by Jason Carr's arrangements restricted to four upright pianos, and they often seem interminable, given Jones's contrived staging and Philippe Giraudeau's flat-footed choreography. Old favourites often benefit from a radical rethink; this one, sadly, misfires.