Members of the Port Angeles Light Opera Association know there’s no business like show business.
They also know it’s not good business to offend your audience.
Five years ago, that sentiment kept “Annie Get Your Gun” from reaching the PALOA stage.
But this summer, the popular production is back — in an updated version that tones down political incorrectness toward Native Americans and stays truer to the real Annie Oakley.
PALOA in July will stage the 1999 Broadway Revival version of the 1946 Irving Berlin classic that has been the musical aggregation’s most requested show for several years.
The original version was already bound and advertised for Port Angeles when, in 1999 — shortly before the new version reached Broadway — PALOA leaders opted to cancel “Annie Get Your Gun” for content they deemed “insensitive and inappropriate.”
The production team discovered Native Americans referred to as “squaws” and “savages” in the 1946 script.
Worried about showing insensitivity to members of the Lower Elwha Klallam and other tribes on the North Olympic Peninsula, PALOA canceled the show and replaced it with “Cinderella.”
“Some of the material was very dated, and taste and humor change,” PALOA board member Richard Stephens, who will also play Chief Sitting Bull this summer, said Tuesday of the association’s choice to cancel the original show.
The revival version of “Annie” eliminates those references, as well as the song, “I’m An Indian Too,” and also paints sharpshooter Annie in a more consistent light in the show’s ending.
Rather than throw a shooting match to be with her man, the romance factor is heightened, and Annie and Frank Butler end their match in a draw, Stephens said.
