The Music Man : In Performance!

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How many more Sundays like this

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Show has been extended to January 15, 2023!

Get your tickets, if you want to see the Closing Show!


Jo

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www.broadwayworld.com/article/THE-MUSIC-MAN-Extends-Broadway-Run-By-Two-Weeks-20221107

THE MUSIC MAN Extends Broadway Run By Two Weeks
The production will now play its positively final Broadway performance on Sunday, January 15, 2023.

by Stephi Wild Nov. 07, 2022

The Music Man has extended its Broadway run by popular demand. Originally announced to close on January 1, the revival of Meredith Willson's musical, starring two-time Tony Award®, Grammy Award®, and Emmy Award®-winning star Hugh Jackman as Professor Harold Hill and two-time Tony Award winner Sutton Foster as Marian Paroo, will now play its positively final Broadway performance on Sunday, January 15, 2023.



In a statement, Producer Kate Horton said, "The hunger of audiences for our show continues unabated. We are grateful to Hugh and Sutton and our entire glorious company for agreeing to add these additional 16 performances. The joy they bring to audiences night after night is incredible to witness and we know this The Music Man will be remembered long after the final curtain comes down. If we could go on forever, we would"


Tickets for The Music Man's final stretch of performances through January 15, 2023, are available now.

Over the course of its run, the production has shattered the Winter Garden Theatre's previous weekly box office record a total of 48 times and has already played to 487K audience members from around the globe.


The Music Man has made available 10,000 subsidized tickets at $20 each or less during its run for New York City School communities in a broad effort to make Broadway more accessible and foster a love for the arts, and broken fundraising records for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Entertainment Community Fund.

The Music Man is directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks and choreographed by Tony Award winner Warren Carlyle. The creative team includes four-time Tony Award winner Santo Loquasto (Scenic & Costume Design), five-time Tony Award winner Brian MacDevitt (Lighting Design), Tony Award winner Scott Lehrer (Sound Design), Luc Verschueren for Campbell Young and Associates (Hair, Wigs, & Makeup Design), Tony Award winner Jonathan Tunick (Orchestrations), David Chase (Vocal and Dance Arrangements), and Patrick Vaccariello (Musical Director).

One of the most universally cherished treasures of the American musical theater, The Music Man was an instant smash hit when it premiered on Broadway on December 19, 1957. It went on to win five Tony Awards, including the prize for Best Musical, and ran for 1,375 performances. The Smithsonian Institution ranks The Music Man as one of the "great glories of American popular culture." The official cast recording of this history-making production of The Music Man is now available on all music streaming platforms, and was released by Accidental Jacket Entertainment.


In addition to Mr. Jackman and Ms. Foster, the cast of The Music Man includes Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley as Marcellus Washburn, Mark Linn-Baker as Mayor Shinn, Tony Award winner Jayne Houdyshell as Mrs. Shinn, and Tony Award winner Marie Mullen as Mrs. Paroo, Remy Auberjonois as Charlie Cowell, Gino Cosculluela as Tommy Djilas, Emma Crow as Zaneeta Shinn, Benjamin Pajak as Winthrop, Emily Jewel Hoder as Amaryllis, Garrett Long as Ethel Toffelmier, Linda Mugleston as Alma Hix, Jessica Sheridan as Maud Dunlop, Rema Webb as Mrs. Squires, Phillip Boykin as Olin Britt, Eddie Korbich as Jacey Squires, Daniel Torres as Ewart Dunlop, Nicholas Ward as Oliver Hix, Lance Roberts as Constable Locke, Max Clayton as Standby for Harold Hill, and Nick Alvino, Jordan Beall, Ronnie S. Bowman Jr., Maria Briggs, Audrina Brudner, Audrey Cardwell, Michael Cash, William Thomas Colin, Kammie Crum, Aydin Eyikan, Richard Gatta, Ethen Green-Younger, Curtis Holland, Andrea Jones-Sojola, Amanda LaMotte, Kayla LaVine, Ross Lekites, Devin Miles Lugo, Drew Minard, Sean Montgomery, Kennedy Pitney, Daniel Patrick Russell, Sherisse Springer, Mitchell Tobin, Kathy Voytko, Branch Woodman and Ryan Worsing rounding out the Ensemble.


Ms. Mullen is appearing with the permission of Actors' Equity Association. The producers gratefully acknowledge Actors' Equity Association for its assistance to this production.


Buy Tickets to The Music Man - Tickets from: $182.5

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It's being reported on the major Hollywood trade paper Variety & Deadline (maybe H'wood Reporter, too) and many social media film media accounts. Unusual for a Broadway show extending its run by only 2 weeks to be treated as if this is a major piece of news

I guess it is the Jackman factor?

Jo

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http://instagram.com/p/CkqZxznj-UK

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The New York Times writes about the relevance and its effort to retrofit to modern times of THE MUSIC MAN.

www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/opinion/music-man-race-broadway.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Opinion

OPINION
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‘The Music Man,’ Race and Broadway
Give this article


John McWhorter
OPINION

‘The Music Man,’ Race and Broadway

Nov. 8, 2022, 4:01 p.m. ET

Credit...Delcan and Co.



John McWhorter
By John McWhorter

Opinion Writer

You're reading the John McWhorter newsletter, for Times subscribers only. A Columbia University linguist explores how race and language shape our politics and culture. Get it in your inbox.
I want to revisit the issue of modern theater and whiteness these days. Space didn’t allow me to specify in last week’s newsletter that my thoughts on it have been influenced by the shows I have taken in of late.

An example is the current revival of “The Music Man.” It’s a show that thoroughly deserves, on its face, a charge that it is just #SoWhite. It really is so very white. It’s about white people in a small, white town in Iowa in the white 1910s. It was created by a white man, the composer and conductor Meredith Willson, and the original cast in 1957 was very, very white.

There’s more to “The Music Man” than all of that, though, and I’ll get to it in a moment. But first, this current production says something about where Broadway is on race in that there are lots of Black people in the cast of the revival.

Not just as anonymous chorus members. Not just as one of the barbershop quartet guys, as has been common for a while. Now even one of the quartet of gossipy matrons — who serve as a kind of Greek chorus of townster opinion — is Black (and has an actual, full, flowery name in the script), as well as one of the leaders in the opening train number. I never knew until now that the line “He’s just a bang beat, bell-ringing, big haul, great go, neck or nothin’, rip roarin’, every time a bull’s-eye salesman!” could sound as Black as it does in this production, complete with a bit of trash-talking body language. And the mayor’s daughter is played by Emma Crow, who is also Black and is a fantastic dancer. A generation ago, this woman, too young to be a background chorus matron, wouldn’t have been cast in a “Music Man” production at all.




All of this contrasts with what could be seen as an initial crack in the plaster in productions of this show not too long ago. The last time “The Music Man” was on Broadway was in 2000, and in it, a Black actor was cast as one of the wandering barbershop quartet members. Corresponding to that, a Black actress was cast as the female protagonist Marian Paroo’s piano student Amaryllis, the idea being that Amaryllis was the Black quartet member’s daughter.

This was a nice start, and I’ve been told that it became a common casting tradition in regional productions of “The Music Man” after that, one of which I saw some years ago. But the tendency was to cast a Black man as the bass in the quartet, with mostly white audiences thrilled, as they seem to be, by Black men with deep singing voices. That is certainly the case in the current revival, where mostly white audiences are all atwitter whenever Phillip Boykin hits one of his low notes. (They also liked it when he did the same thing beauteously in the opening number of the recent-ish revival of “On the Town.”) And for whatever it’s worth, he does have some seriously swell resonance.

But in this production, Boykin is one of many Black cast members, such that Blackness becomes more than any cartoonish notion of African-esque masculinity. We have moved on. In this production of “The Music Man,” Black people just are. To such an extent that while Amaryllis’s father is Black (as is suggested by some stage business), the actress playing Amaryllis, Emily Hoder, is white.

Watching the Black actors in this revival making their living, I recalled a party I attended in New York City in 1988 where I met some seasoned Black musical theater actors, among whom the joke was how all of them had lost count of how many times they had been in local productions of the Fats Waller jukebox revue “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and how slim the pickings tended to be otherwise. On Broadway at the time, if you weren’t lucky enough to be in the small cast of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” or the gospel concert as musical “The Gospel at Colonus,” “Black Broadway” pretty much meant — besides, yes, a Broadway revival of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” cast with the five original players — that there were two Black chorus members in a revival of “Anything Goes,” and that was processed as progressive. And the actors, a man and a woman, only danced with each other, though I heard at the time that when asked about it they said they liked it that way because they had danced together in other shows.

Their modern equivalents certainly have their complaints, but they wouldn’t be anything like those I heard at that party. This production of “The Music Man” is a demonstration. The same year of that party I saw a version of “The Music Man” at City Opera with, as far as I can remember (in addition to a grievously miscast Bob Gunton as Harold Hill), not a single Black person in it.




Yet from what I see and read in sources such as the We See You, White American Theater manifesto I mentioned last week, from the general idea that theater must submit to a certain kind of reckoning on race, and from some takes on modern Broadway from younger critics of late, I imagine that some might say a “Music Man” with lots of Black cast members denies the bigotry and even the violence against Black people that was typical in the milieu — again, Iowa in the 1910s — in which it is set.

And it is true that in those years (and before and for a while after), Black sections of towns in the Midwest and the South were being torched by white mobs as people like the ones in “The Music Man” stood by watching. Lynching was still ordinary. Black people were not living in burgherly harmony with whites as if race didn’t matter.

In this current “Music Man,” casting is seriously race-blind — all performers, regardless of race, are just playing people. Or perhaps white people? To some, this will look like a lie set to music. In real life, Black people in towns like the fictional River City, if there were any, occupied their own separate world. There were no interracial barbershop quartets and sewing circles, the mayor’s daughter was the same race as he was, and often all it took was a spark of misunderstanding for a race riot to ravage countless Black lives in an afternoon.

So, to reckon with that reality, perhaps truly progressive theater is that which focuses on Black people either suffering that violence or dealing with its later legacies now. That means that theater should be therapeutic rather than diverting — and that is hardly a dismissible proposition in itself. It isn’t too far from what Plato suggested in “The Republic.” But here’s the thing: Broadway — if I may be allowed the stretch of pretending it represents American theater in its entirety — currently offers a great deal of this reckoning and therapy on race.

As I write, in New York we can take in a revival of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” which won a Pulitzer in 1990. Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog” is back after 20 years. “Ain’t No Mo’” explores what would happen if Black people were sent back to Africa. “A Strange Loop” is a musical about a gay Black man’s pathway to writing a musical about a gay Black man writing a musical. And we can also take in Arthur Miller’s exploration of the American dream, “The Death of a Salesman,” rendered through the blackness of Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke and André De Shields.

So a case that Broadway doesn’t get Black pain is, lately, fragile. But I worry still, about an argument of a sort one hears from certain quarters, that a piece like “The Music Man” should be dismissed as obsolete, that it should not play alongside “The Piano Lesson” but should be consigned to the dustbin of history. That makes me think of my January clapback against the young critics who think the original “West Side Story” is a dismissible antique.

Shouldn’t our theater be about people of our time working through what the past did to them and moving on into a dynamic present? Well, yes — to an extent. But I assume we can do two things at once. We can acknowledge historical injustice, while also enjoying what was uplifting and exemplary, in a sense that artistically transcends specific injustices.




Now, one reasonably might ask just what the art is in “The Music Man.” And the answer is that there is quite a bit. The script and lyrics channel the nuances of human speech gorgeously, and I cannot help referring you to a recent episode of my language podcast “Lexicon Valley” where I explain how. Then I invite all but professional pianists to try playing the original dance music of “Shipoopi” from the piano-vocal score. It offers the same challenge in places as the late work of Scott Joplin — and remember, ragtime was invented by Black people. Or: If you were writing a musical about a flimflam man coming to a small town to snooker the rubes into buying band instruments, how would you begin it? I am quite sure I wouldn’t think of having a bunch of salesmen in a train car talking about the flimflam man, much less actually rapping it rather than singing — and especially in 1957! This is serious creativity. It’s art. It should not molder in archives. There’s a reason it’s still regularly performed over 60 years after its debut, and nothing about the latest reflexes of modernity justifies silencing it.

Make no mistake: “The Piano Lesson” is key theater. The current revival could stop to breathe a bit more here and there, but it is a solid and arresting rendition of the property. “The Music Man,” retrofitted somewhat to allow a representative array of talented people to do their work, is key as well to a healthy American theater culture. We need, to wit, both Meredith Willson and August Wilson.


John McWhorter (@johnhmcwhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism.”

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http://instagram.com/p/CkyrchzNH4_

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I don't think we ever saw this ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION conducted by Hollywood Reporter.

This came out when the Tony nominees were announced and before the Tonys itself when the awards were given.


For brevity's sake -- I will edit the transcript so only the Hugh Jackman portions are printed.

HOME
NEWS
GENERAL NEWS
THR Tony Nominees Roundtable: Hugh Jackman, Ruth Negga, Jesse Williams, Mary-Louise Parker and Sam Rockwell on Broadway in the Time of COVID
The actors also discuss the challenges and rewards of doing eight shows a week, how to address exorbitant ticket prices, unruly audience members and more.


BY SCOTT FEINBERG



JUNE 8, 2022 5:00AM
Jesse Williams, Ruth Negga, Hugh Jackman, Mary-Louise Parker and Sam Rockwell were photographed on June 6 at the PMC Studios in New York.


Ahead of the 75th Tony Awards, which will be held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, The Hollywood Reporter gathered five of this Broadway season’s acting nominees for a conversation about the challenges and rewards of working on Broadway, generally, and specifically this season, in the middle of a global pandemic.

Two already have Tonys to their name: Australian Hugh Jackman, a best actor in a musical nominee for The Music Man, in which he plays a conman who brings trouble to small-town Iowa (the Hollywood A-lister, who played Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise, previously won for the musical The Boy from Oz in 2004 and received a special Tony in 2012); and American Mary-Louise Parker, a best actress in a play nominee for How I Learned to Drive, in which she plays a woman recounting childhood molestation at the hands of her uncle (the Weeds Emmy winner was previously recognized for the plays Proof in 2001 and The Sound Inside in 2021).


An Irishwoman Ruth Negga, a vet of stages in Dublin and London, who is up for best actress in a play for her Broadway debut in Macbeth, in which she plays the conspiratorial wife of the title character; American Oscar winner and theater stalwart Sam Rockwell, a best actor in a play contender for American Buffalo, in which he plays a small-time hustler who is also plotting a crime; and American Jesse Williams, best known for his 12 years on TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, who is in contention for best featured actor in a play for his first show on Broadway, Take Me Out, in which he plays a baseball star who comes out as gay.

Below, you can listen to the entirety of the conversation or read excerpts of it (edited for clarity and brevity).


Hugh Jackman at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable. PHOTOGRAPHED BY NINA WESTERVELT

Each show represented at this gathering is a revival — in other words, a show which has been performed before, in some cases many times going back decades or even centuries — and all have previously been done on Broadway except for How I Learned to Drive, which was done Off Broadway. So I’d like to begin by talking about what led you to sign up for these parts, and why now was the time to revive these particular shows.



Hugh, you last starred in a musical on Broadway nearly 20 years ago, in the now-legendary production of The Boy from Oz, for which you won a Tony. You’ve since been back in plays, but this show — first performed on Broadway in 1957 with Robert Preston — is your first time back in a musical.

JACKMAN The first show I ever did was The Music Man in high school. I was 14 and I absolutely loved it. After I began acting for a living, for many years the idea of doing The Music Man at some point was bandied around, but I didn’t know when. But about four years ago, I don’t know, I went “The Music Man! Damn, I’m almost 50, I might have missed the boat!” All of a sudden, I felt an urgency, so I rang my agent, who, weirdly, had had a call that day inquiring about me doing The Music Man. So that’s how it happened.
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Hugh, your show was going to begin previews in July and open in October.

JACKMAN In March when it all happened, we had a few months, and I had planned a bit of time off, so I had nothing except The Music Man. I actually had never had a summer without working for as long as I remember. Luckily enough, Warren Carlyle, who is our choreographer, and I, we got into a room, and we just danced four days a week for a year and a half. He would sit in a far corner yelling at me with a mask on, and I danced for three hours and sweated, because I didn’t know when I was coming back. And I sang every day.



When Broadway reopened last September 2021, audiences were, understandably enough, hesitant about coming back, but things really started to come back to life in December with The Music Man, which drew greater numbers of people and revenue than any other show. But I know that for The Music Man and all of your shows, COVID did not stop being a daily consideration just because you were back in a theater.


JACKMAN We have 40-something actors in our show — I’d never been part of anything with half of that — and there was one night when we had 14 people off because of COVID, and we still managed to do a show. My friend texted me, “I think you should change the lyric to ‘7.6 trombones.'” [laughs] We used understudies, swings, everybody — there was even one point when our assistant choreographer said, “Can I fit in a costume?” People were taking on roles that they hadn’t studied. Sutton’s [costar Sutton Foster’s] daughter got COVID and, of course, then she got COVID, and I knew it was only a matter of time for me because I’m kissing her every night. But when Sutton was off, the swing, Kathy Voytko, came in that day and they said, “Oh, you’re on,” and she’s a swing, so she’s covering eight or nine tracks, and she said, “Which part?” And they said, “Marian Paroo.” She had never had a rehearsal. They handed her a little mini script with just her scenes highlighted, and luckily she’d been at rehearsal watching, but she’s watching nine tracks, not just Marian. It was 12 o’clock when she found out she was on, and from 1 to 5 she went through every scene, and she went on that night.

ROCKWELL It really is a heroic time for understudies.

WILLIAMS Oh, my God, what a skillset.

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I’ve got to ask you about how audiences are behaving during this time. All of you have audience members right up in your face, none more so than Sam at Circle in the Square…

ROCKWELL Yesterday, Laurence went like this [motioning to an audience member to pull her mask up]. They’re in our lap, man.

WILLIAMS Yeah, you’ve got the whole cross-breeze of an audience.

I think the vast majority of people are doing what they’re supposed to do and adhering to the instructions of the ushers with the “Masks Up” signs at the front of the theaters — but most theaters are still selling concessions during intermission, and patrons are permitted to consume them from their seats, which means “Masks Down”…

ROCKWELL I like to think that we’re getting slow immunity. [laughs]

PARKER We don’t have an intermission.

ROCKWELL We do.

JACKMAN Yeah.

WILLIAMS We do, but you can’t bring drinks into our theater.



Setting aside the stuff that’s going on around you while you’re performing, what do each of you find the most challenging or daunting about playing the characters you’re playing at the moment?

PARKER That it has to end.

JACKMAN Yeah. These old musicals — I’ve done Oklahoma! as well — were built in a way that was a little more actor-friendly than the modern musical. With The Boy from Oz I had 22 songs and was never offstage, but with The Music Man I have five or six songs and Sutton has five or six songs, and there’s a couple of moments that feel like a smoke break. [laughs]

NEGGA Totally! That’s exactly what it is!

JACKMAN “Let’s give Robert Preston 10 minutes here.” I remember that with Shakespeare too.

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You’ve all done screen work as well as stage work. Do you find that your experience with each helps you with the other, or are they just totally different?

JACKMAN I find both inform the other in really good ways.

PARKER Me too.

With Broadway productions, you guys perform the same show as many as eight times a week for months on end. To many non-actors, that sounds masochistic — people assume it must get old, it must get stale, it must get boring, it must start to drive you crazy. And yet, almost uniformly, actors say that’s not the case…

NEGGA Oh, no, it is.

ROCKWELL Well, that is the case — it is masochistic, it is all that — but then it’s also something else. It’s also glorious. When it’s great, it’s fucking great. And when you see Chris Walken do the monologue in Pulp Fiction — or Laurence Fishburne do Morpheus [in the Matrix films] — the reason he can do that is because Chris Walken has also done Coriolanus, he’s done Hamlet twice, he’s done Romeo, you know? And so that monologue in Pulp Fiction? Of course he can do that. It’s like butter. Definitely the stage informs the film work, I think. With George C. Scott. Viola [Davis]. Whoever.

WILLIAMS I’m super excited to see. I do feel like I’ve been on steroids. I feel like I’m using every molecule in my body in a way that I wasn’t. On stage, you’re shooting the master and the close-up at the same time all the time. Everything matters. Everything is communicating something to the audience. The amount of times I’ve had somebody who’s seen the show come up to me and comment on what my hands did? You wouldn’t have seen that on screen.

NEGGA The spatial awareness that you get as an actor on stage really helps, for me anyway, during screen work.

JACKMAN I love two-show days because you don’t have to wait and sleep to come back the next night and try to get it right. With film, you’re never really happy with anything.




Playing off of what you just said, Hugh, and knowing what you guys know from the inside: if you were a ticket-buyer on a two-show day, would you buy a ticket for the first show because the performers are fresh, or the second show because maybe they’ve worked something out from the first show?

JACKMAN Hmmm. I always go to a matinee.

NEGGA Me too, I love a matinee.

WILLIAMS Wow.

ROCKWELL Oh, interesting. And some heavy cats will show up on Tuesday night, almost every Tuesday. I’m like, “Why are Matt Damon and Chris Rock here? It’s a Tuesday.” But Tuesday shows are really good because you’re coming rested.




Is Broadway doing enough to make shows accessible for people who aren’t older, white and wealthy?

PARKER No.

ROCKWELL The tickets are so fucking expensive, that’s the problem.

JACKMAN It’s more affordable in London.

NEGGA Oh, yeah. When I heard what it costs here, I couldn’t believe it. It’s prohibitive.

JACKMAN I really have given this a lot of thought, and I find it very disturbing and worrying what is happening, this idea of market forces being predominant and “whatever the market can bear is good for the whole” — I don’t think that’s true, and I wrestle with it because, of course, because I know I’m getting a wage which is not what the other kids are getting in our show, and that probably impacts on ticket prices as well. We have a ticket initiative for people, and I give a portion of my wage to people who have never been to the theater, but it’s not really getting to the root of the problem. We have to be very proactive about this to protect what the theater audience looks like 20, 30 years from now. And if we’re only really making it accessible to people who have a lot of money, or the very few lucky ones who get a free ticket somehow, which is probably three percent of the audience, we’re going to end up where people are not coming.

PARKER How is anyone going to even consider coming to the theater if it’s $125 for a bad seat? There’s something about the not-for-profit theaters. They draw a lot of people who want to do a limited run, they attract people who haven’t done a lot of theater, sometimes people who are TV stars or whatever, and I think there’s some flaw within that system also that doesn’t feel quite right.

WILLIAMS I know that ours offers, like, $30 tickets for people under 30, and a student ID gives you half-price, and things like that which people are taking advantage of.

NEGGA Like with anything at the moment, it’s really important to keep questioning the status quo. And in terms of getting people into the theater so that it’s not just a sort of playhouse for the elite? People will come to see themselves on stage. I want to see people like me — and I want to see people who are different, as well, but I want to see me occasionally. So I think it’s about encouraging all different kinds of people to be involved in our business — to be playwrights, to be actors, to be directors.

And that’s certainly the case with your show, Ruth. Lest anyone think they’re in for something stuffy, there’s an actor in a wheelchair, there’s colorblind casting—

NEGGA Intentional casting, not colorblind. That’s very modern. But you know what, I feel like Shakespeare is modern. It’s the language of the people. It wasn’t an elitist artform. The theater was the kind of place where people ran amok and you caught some of the speech but you didn’t catch the rest of the speech. He’s actually really democratic as a playwright, and I think we forget that that’s where the origins of theater come from.

PARKER Sometimes they do the student matinee thing [where a performance’s audience is comprised primarily or entirely of students], and I felt like our show was not a good show to do a student matinee for, but I wanted to have students there, so I said, “Can we please have them in, talk to them about their lives, spend more time with them, actually, do some scenes from the play, and then they can go home?” I had to push really, really hard, but they did it. And I went out early and just sat and talked to them. I think there should be more student programs like that.


JACKMAN That’s inspiring, that’s great.



WILLIAMS That sounds awesome. So they didn’t just watch the play, you sat with them, did a couple of scenes, and talked about what brought you here?

PARKER Mhmm. And we had them write scenes and we performed them. It was so great.

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How you feel about entrance applause…

NEGGA It’s hilarious! What is this?!

JACKMAN Uncomfortable.

ROCKWELL It’s not great.

PARKER You can shut it down, I’ll tell you how. With Heisenberg — this was my idea, this is how much I loathe it — I entered with the stage manager, in my costume, who gave the cell phone speech as I entered. Never got it. Dead Man’s Cell Phone [an Off Broadway play in 2008], had a hat on, other people talking, lifted it up, nobody saw it. The Sound Inside, started speaking in the dark. This play, started speaking in the dark. I saw Paul Newman do it once.

ROCKWELL Oh, that’s clever.

NEGGA I want to know how you get it! [laughs]

WILLIAMS Exactly!

ROCKWELL It’s a good problem to have, but it’s distracting.

PARKER Because then you start the play feeling like you’re an actor in a play, and what’s worse than that?



JACKMAN I feel uncomfortable with it, but actually on this one, Harold Hill, who’s the greatest conman, would dig it.



PARKER That works.



JACKMAN And that’s actually informed my whole show. But I did get an “I love you, Wolverine!” [laughs]




Most annoying thing that audience members do…

WILLIAMS Let their phones ring, and the long crinkle of what-in-God’s-name-are-you-unwrapping?! They’re trying to be quiet, but they’re making it take 20 minutes.

JACKMAN Commentating.

NEGGA Commentating, yeah.


JACKMAN “Oh, he’s left-handed! That’s interesting.” [laughs]



WILLIAMS Just having a conversation—



JACKMAN Like they’re watching TV.

NEGGA We had a “This is boring,” and then they left.




What you do on your day off…

NEGGA Sleep.

WILLIAMS Say “no” to all appointments or calls.

ROCKWELL Beer, chips, gym. Maybe a movie.

PARKER It just depends on my kids, really.

JACKMAN Same.



Most superstitious thing you do each show…


PARKER I’m so superstitious I couldn’t even tell you. I’m superstitious about my superstitions. [laughs]


JACKMAN I grab my suitcase — the prop guy has it out there behind the train, I’m there and I grab it, I flip it once, and I give it to him. And when he was off, and there was another prop guy, it was almost impossible to go on without him.



ROCKWELL I loathe superstition so much, but if I’m being honest with myself, I probably am superstitious about certain things. If I didn’t do a vocal warmup, I’d be scared.

WILLIAMS I stand in the wings before every show, while the house is chattering, and just take my hat off and just say a prayer of gratitude for everything in my life.

NEGGA I’m playing a woman who laughs in the face of superstition, and I’m really superstitious usually, so I’m kind of using this as an opportunity to surrender a bit.



Most unconventional thing in your dressing room…

JACKMAN This is easy for me and I keep it there because it makes me laugh. On opening night, I walked in and Ryan Reynolds had two massive portraits of himself [laughs] — on my makeup mirror was Gene Kelly’s famous kick with Ryan’s face superimposed on top of it and “Good luck with your little show.” I didn’t stop laughing for about a minute, and then I turned around to go to my bathroom, and there was another one of him, literally framed.




PARKER My son gave me some Ethopian incense. I have an altar.

WILLIAMS A papier-mâché box for bad feelings made by my niece and nephew, three and four.




The person whose attendance at your show has meant the most to you…

ROCKWELL We got excited about Holly Hunter.

PARKER Jill Biden.



JACKMAN A bunch of people come to mind, but one is Barbara Cook’s son-in-law. Barbara Cook was a really great mentor of mine, and she was incredible, and she was in the original production. One of the great actors of all time who just happened to be an incredible singer.




The number of shows per week you wish you had…

WILLIAMS I’m okay with our usual number — although we’re going to do seven shows in the last four days before we close this week, which I’m a little worried about, but it will be fine.

NEGGA For me, it’s just about stamina. You here [in America] have your dark day on Monday — I’m used to it being on a Sunday — so that means you’ve got your Friday night show, your two shows on Saturday and your matinee on Sunday. That’s tough. That’s four shows in less than 48 hours.

WILLIAMS I like having the Sunday matinee and then having Sunday night and all day Monday and Tuesday.

ROCKWELL Yes. I would say seven would be the way to go. [Bryan] Cranston had that for Network.



JACKMAN I don’t mind eight, but if I had my way there’d be six matinees and two evening shows.


ROCKWELL Oh, that’s cool!

NEGGA That’s such a good idea.

PARKER What a great idea.

ROCKWELL That’s a great idea. The evening thing is tough.



JACKMAN It keeps a lot of actors away from the theater who’ve got kids.



Hugh, you will be in your show through January 2023, having started in December of 2021, meaning 14 months, just like you did with The Boy from Oz, never missing a performance…

JACKMAN Yeah.

WILLIAMS Insane. Insane.



NEGGA How do you keep the stamina?!

JACKMAN I don’t know. I’m feeling good. I think it’s a lot to do with the show and the company. I feel different than I did on The Boy from Oz. I’m really excited about it.


ROCKWELL But let’s face it, you’re a beast.

Mary-Louise, what’s your number? Again, you’ve had different shows in back-to-back seasons…

PARKER I actually was supposed to go from The Sound Inside right into How I Learned to Drive. I shipped my stuff from one dressing room to the other. But seven sounds great. And I love some version of Hugh’s idea.

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/CkyUGOIvzWj

[jo]

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/Ck4g1Xxu_R4

[njr]

^ *confused* Don’t they mean CITIZENS? Or is this some Music Man “inside joke?”

Nancy

[jo]

deadline.com/2022/11/the-son-laura-dern-florian-zeller-video-interview-contenders-la-1235176666/

Dern shared during today’s chat at Contenders Los Angeles moderated by Antonia Blyth that Jackman feels who he is as a parent “has forever changed” from the experience of making the film. (The Oscar-nominated actor was scheduled to appear but was forced to bow out of the presentation after losing his voice following recent work in Broadway’s The Music Man.)

Hope all he needs is some vocal rest... and not as serious as the vocal cord hemorrhage he suffered when he did a show in Turkey.


Jo

[jo]

Max Clayton posted on his Instagram account that he will also play Prof Hill on Sunday at the 3:00 pm matinee, but this time with LBlackman.

Max also wished Hugh to feel better soon!


Jo

[jo]

[jo]

Hope to see the show post-Thanksgiving with Hugh Jackman in the show

Will not be able to post much on the show, starting today.


Jo

[jo]

Hugh’s message on his Instagram Storis —

“I am getting better.and hope to be cleared to perform very soon.


Jo

[njr]

He’s back!!

Nancy

[jo]

When I did not see any mention of max’s name on the telecharge email reminder on my date today to see The Music Man — I knew he would be back!!

Long entrance applause & some cheers! I thought I could still hear a little rasp in his voice but he was in fine form - playful, scintillating, charisma in spades, seemed he was Playing to the audience 10000% . Romantic scene seemed much longer than I remembered - confirmed by some cheers from the audience

Show is still very fresh,

Auction was back. Two bids at usd 20,000:& 11000 won a straw Boater each!!

Jo

[jo]

This was the 4th time I had seen TMM with Hugh as Harold Hill..and it turned out to be the best experience for me!

I had the best & the most comfortable viewing. It was center most seat for 2nd row orch (which was slightly elevated vs front row) - but by happy accident no one turned up for the two front row seats in front of me - so, perfect & comfortable viewing ( no neck crick) of this show.

Because of that - and because I thought the performance of Hugh was so special & I could see every emotion etched on his face for the first performance that he came back to the show after a few uncertain days on the road to recovery, his joy of performing was inimitable and such a joy to see! As well as 3 special moments — he tickled Sutton playfully, the breaking of the 4th wall seemed extra long and Hugh making dance motions joyfully ( choreo by Hugh, not Carlyle), and what seemed to be like an extended kissing scene which sent romantic cheers from the audience! All in front of my bewitched eyes 😉

I have another viewing of the show on Sunday - hope it will also carry special memories for me!

Jo

[jo]

There seems to be a special bond between Hugh & Benjamin (Winthrop). He gave him a special Tom Brady special shirt on Ben’s birthday. He asked Ben to be his Deadpool partner to tease Ryan…

Yesterday (Nov 27), during curtain call, he asked Ben to do a hat trick with the straw boater. Then Hugh announced it was his last performance because “Winthrop” was ready to take over 😁


Jo

[jo]

Benjamin calls his special friend Hugh a “man-child” …there is much affection between them 💕

What is it with Hugh Jackman - his child co-stars feel a special bond with him — Young Peter in Boy From Oz, Max in Real Steel, Laura in Logan, & now Benjamin in Music Man!

Jo

[jo]