`Annie' get your sensitivity training: an updated version.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

STAGE PREVIEW Annie Get Your Gun What: The 1946 musical about Annie Oakley, updated in 1999; presented by the Oregon Festival of American Music Where: Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street When: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 5, 8, 9 and 11; 2:30 p.m. Aug. 6 Tickets: $24 to $28; 682-5000

Irving Berlin's musical story of the real-life Annie Oakley has a certain cringe factor for 21st century audiences.

The show, which premiered in 1946 on Broadway and was made into a movie by MGM in 1950, has those cliched redskins whooping it up.

It's got crack shot and uber-feminist Annie Oakley intentionally losing a shooting match to get her guy, as well as singing the clever but spectacularly improper, by today's standards, "I'm an Indian Too."

So, what's a director to do when he wants to stage the show in Eugene in 2006?

In the case of the Oregon Festival of American Music, he relies on the 1999 rewrite by Peter Stone, who set out to make the original musical a little less challenging to our more delicate sensibilities.

"There are places in the original that are immediately viewed - rightfully so - by modern audiences as patronizing, stereotyping of Native Americans," said Jim Ralph, artistic director of the festival. "Stone did a superb job of finessing the absolutely superb (original) libretto to be doable in the 21st century."

Stone fixed Berlin's musical in a number of ways.

The Indian problem is handled largely by placing those old cliched redskins into a play within a play, making out that they're as much in on the joke as anyone.

Annie, who in the bad old days threw the shooting match after realizing "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun," still tries to lose the shooting match to get her guy in the new production. But this time, a more-sensitive Frank counters by missing his last five shots, too, to make them all tied up and equal.

If this all sounds a little like kissing your sister, the plot adjustment still helped propel the Berlin musical back onto the Broadway stage, meaning a new generation of audiences could enjoy such Berlin classics as "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)," though "I'm an Indian Too" has disappeared entirely.

"When we first started talking about the show for this year and that title came up, frankly I was concerned because I know the piece, and I know there are real problems with it for today's audience," said director Richard Jessup. "The world has changed so much since 1946, thank goodness. I think this version works very very well for a 2006 audience."

More than just smoothing out the cultural rough edges, though, the 1999 version of the show is musically updated as well, Jessup said.

The songs have a looser, jazzier feel that calls for more interpretation by performers.

"They have opened it up a little bit in terms of how the show is now sung. In my mind it's helpful to the singers. They feel like they can do some interpreting. I think that is great for everybody. It brings a freshness to the songs that I know the performers enjoy and I really feel like the audience will enjoy, too."

One of Jessup's directorial challenges is going to be the gunfire.

He decided early on against using actual guns firing blanks; instead the sound of each shot will come from a percussionist in the orchestra pit. "It's a more of a theatrical approach," he says.

Shirley Andress will play Annie.

"It's pretty fun to do a musical that actually has the basis of a true story behind it," the Eugene actress and singer said.

"When you get an opportunity to play someone that really lived it makes you dig your heels in just a little bit deeper. It's been fun to research her and figure out what sort of person she really was."

What Andress likes about the musical is the wide range of music it contains.

"You have really cute, adorable songs from `Doin' What Comes Naturally' to `You Can't Get a Man With a Gun,' which is a very aggressive singing style, to `Falling in Love,' a ballad. I get to do all styles of music, which is fun."

The Eugene cast also includes Jeff Pierce as Frank Butler, Patrick Torelle as Buffalo Bill Cody, Emily Gilbert as Folly Tate and Evynne Smith as Winnie Tate.

A big change that Stone made for his 1999 adaptation was moving a key song - ``There's No Business Like Show Business,'' a scene changer in the original - to the very opening of the musical.

For some critics, that's like eating dessert first.

``I completely understand why he did it," Jessup says. "That song is so synonymous with the show. It's a song everybody knows. But it's a number that goes on for 10 minutes. Right off the top of the show you are getting to a very high place. The trick is to maintain that. I think we're up to it.''