Rootin' Tootin' Bernadette

Just about everyone who knows Broadway musicals is familiar with the score of Annie Get Your Gun, which includes such standards as There's No Business Like Show Business and Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better.

Ethel Merman put her stamp on the original stage production in 1946. Now, there's a revival on its way to New York by way of Washington, with stage veteran Bernadette Peters stepping into Annie Oakley's formidable boots.

Peters, who is known for her work in such Stephen Sondheim musicals as Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park With George, tells CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Mark McEwen that she is excited about her latest role.

"Irving Berlin wrote a wonderful [score], the most amazing songs, and it's very joyful and positive," says Peters, who turns 51 next month. "It's a great role to be able to play. I'm very lucky."

She calls Oakley "a wonderful characterÂ…that says what's on her mind. If she loves someone, she just says it."

Onstage, Peters says "I love you" to actor Tom Wopat, who plays rival sharpshooter Frank Butler. The two characters are at loggerheads professionally but wind up as a loving couple.
"What I love about it is: What do you give up for the relationship? What do you both compromise? Do you both give up your egos to have something fulfilling and loving together? I think it's very nice," says Peters, who only recently wed for the first time.

Of her costar, she says, "He's a rock. He's very professional. He knows his way around the stage."

Peters has found some things in common with Annie Oakley: "Don't ask me to bake an apple pie or anything like that. [And] her offstage persona was more quiet than her onstage persona. That's kind of like me also."

Annie Get Your Gun, currently running at the Kennedy Center in Washington, starts performances in New York on Feb. 2.