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Much has been written about the life of legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley. One of the most enduring accounts of Oakley and her two loves—guns, and Frank Butler, respectively—is Irvin Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. The original Broadway musical starred the gutsy Ethel Merman in 1946. The 1999 revival starred the incomparable Bernadette Peters. Country music icon Reba McEntire gave it a whirl on the Great White Way in 2001.

With all that star power and recognizable tunes like “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” as part of its legacy, it’s ambitious for any theater to stage the show, especially a small community theater with limited resources. Yet, Baton Rouge Little Theater believes it has what it takes to give local audiences a show they will enjoy.

“This is probably our biggest feel good show of the year,” says Keith Dixon, the show’s director as well as the managing artistic director of Little Theater. “We want [audiences] to have a good time. We want them to walk away smiling.”

Dixon’s cast of 28 singers and dancers is led by Lauren Regner as Annie and Scott Sutton as Annie’s rival-turned-lover Frank.

Playing gunslinging cowgirl Annie Oakley is nothing new to Lauren Regner. She reprises a role she first played at Parkview Baptist School in Baton Rouge. Regner believes she and her character share a bond. “I think I’m a lot like Annie because I’m very extroverted,” says Regner, 21, an LSU senior. “She doesn’t let anything stand in her way. Not even a man.”

Sutton, 22, admits while the role of Frank calls for a strong onstage presence, this show is all about its leading lady. “Frank’s this cocky gunslinger who thinks he can take the world on his own…Then comes this girl who’s bigger and better than he is, and he falls in love with her,” says the LSU junior. “He really can’t hate her for being better than him because he truly loves her.”

Theatergoers have an opportunity to see if they fall in love with Annie and company when the curtain goes up on this ambitious community theater production March 10 through 26.