The award-winning singer-actress, who opened the Broadway company of Mamma Mia!, is set to play Annie Oakley in a month-long run of the Berlin classic this summer in Toronto. The Toronto Star reports that Pitre will play opposite the Frank Butler of country music star Paul Brandt in the mounting of the musical at Toronto's Massey Hall.
Like the acclaimed City Center Encores! series, Annie Get Your Gun will be presented on a stage filled with a 25-piece orchestra. There will be lights and costumes but no additional scenery. Donna Feore will direct and choreograph the musical about the sharp-shootin' Oakley; Rick Fox will conduct the onstage orchestra.
Annie Get Your Gun will begin performances in early August. Dates and ticket information will be announced shortly.
For her performance as Donna in the Canadian, Broadway and touring companies of Mamma Mia!, Louise Pitre received the Dora Mavor Moore Award, the San Francisco Critics Circle Award, the U.S. National Broadway Award as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. Her numerous theatrical credits include roles in Piaf; Les Misérables; The World Goes 'Round; I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change; Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Pitre’s solo recordings are titled "Songs My Mother Taught Me" and "All of My Life Has Led to This." Pitre was also recently involved in the world-premiere production of the late Cy Coleman's The Great Ostrovsky.
The original production of Annie Get Your Gun — featuring a score by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields — opened at the Imperial Theatre in May 1946, playing 1,147 performances before closing Feb. 12, 1949. Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton starred. The most recent Broadway production — March 1999-Sept. 2001 — cast Bernadette Peters as Annie Oakley. Peters won her second Tony Award for her performance opposite Tom Wopat's Frank Butler. The Berlin score features such classic tunes as "There's No Business Like Show Business," "They Say It's Wonderful," "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" and "I Got Lost in His Arms."
