Hi y’all, so: womanizer Frank Butler comes to Ohio with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for a shooting match. He is pitted against the illiterate, endearingly naive Annie Oakley - who just so happens to be an incredible shot. Girl falls in love with boy, boy feels upstaged by girl when she is better at shooting things than him, stuff happens and eventually girl abandons shooting prowess to be a submissive, happy little wife to reformed boy. What a load of chauvinist nonsense, I hear you cry. To which I reply: yes, it is... but it’s full of amazing 1940s cheese, which Ben Kavanagh’s production is happy to embrace. The result is a charming and, for the most part, thoroughly entertaining, bit of fun.

A slightly shaky start is forgotten when the rifle-wielding, muddy faced Charlotte Reid struts onstage as an adorable Annie Oakley. Female musical leads often have the deplorable job of providing overly sugary, grating antitheses to everything else that’s good in a production; Reid, however, is a bit different (a bit of a cocky brat and MUCH more likeable), and lovely to watch both singing and acting. She is well matched by Will Karani as Frank Butler, particularly when they relax into their roles a bit: one of their best and most convincing duets, Anything You Can Do, was ironically not sung to perfection but was carried off with more enthusiasm and chemistry than some of the earlier ballads.

The ensemble comes together brilliantly to reign in the moments that threaten occasionally to drag. There are also some fab little details: the Moonshine Lullaby was complemented by some very harmonious male cleaners who diffused any cheesy overkill by adding just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek comedy to the scene.

Despite these elements, and some consistently hilarious contributions from Liane Grant and Oscar Mcarthy, there are some frustrating issues to be taken up with this production, which only just prevent me from gushing about it. The synchronisation of the band with the singers is not always slick enough, and begins to waver alarmingly at points in the second half: the transition from dialogue to song and back again is also clumsy at times, exacerbated by dodgy lighting. Oh, and I’m still a bit confused about the ‘romantic’ dance during They Say It’s Wonderful: yes, we know some of the mushy songs can get a bit boring, but it’s sort of a pre-requisite with musicals, and the audience can deal with it without needing a sideshow to keep them occupied.

In general, all this production seems to need is a bit more courage and a bit more conviction. It’s meant to be silly, it’s meant to be light-hearted: the clever little details that Kavanagh has prescribed are mostly extremely effective in carrying off potential cringe-moments, so they just need to be combined with even more gusto in the admittedly cheese-tastic but oh-so-catchy numbers. The dances are great when everyone really goes for it; the glitches most likely a symptom of teething (rather than fundamental) problems, which did not stop me or my musical-adoring plus one from leaving the theatre with big smiles on our faces.