The Music Man : Critical Thinking/Official Reviews

[jo]

The Music Man – Winter Garden Theatre, New York
by Admin on Tuesday, 15 February, 2022 in Onstage, Review, Worldwide

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York. Picture: Julieta Cervantes

The Music Man continues at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, currently booking to 6 November 2022.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Playing the title role in The Music Man may only be Hugh Jackman’s fifth Broadway appearance in the last 20 years – two of which were in limited-run plays – but he is easily the most bankable star appearing on a New York stage right now. And it brings him full circle to how his career began on the musical theatre stage in his native Australia, before he got his break starring as Curly in Trevor Nunn’s 1998 revival of Oklahoma! at London’s National Theatre, ahead of winning the lead role of Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise that began in 2000.

So now he’s that rare leading man: an action man film hero as well as musical theatre superstar, with an instinctive love of theatre and live performance that also saw him hosting Broadway’s annual Tony Awards for three consecutive years from 2003.

And Broadway loves him, unashamedly, as he soaks up the attention with a knowing gleam in his eye, a twinkling spring in his step, and a gleaming smile never far from his lips. He’s quite clearly as delighted to be on Broadway again as much as the audience is to see him there. (And they sure are paying for the privilege: though there are day seats available for those prepared to queue early for $45, tickets are on sale through the box office at an eye-watering $600 for premium seats).

The gratification has also been serially delayed – originally due to open in 2020, it was of course postponed by the Covid pandemic when Broadway was shut down entirely for some 18 months, and has itself been beset by problems during its extended preview period that began in mid-December amidst the surge in the Omicron variant. Both Jackman and his co-star Sutton Foster tested positive for the virus so a number of performances were cancelled.

Has it been worth waiting for after all that time? Yes and no. Only a complete curmudgeon would not get a lot of pleasure from this production and admire the epic sweep of Jerry Zaks’ fiercely well-drilled and lavish production, reuniting the creative team that joined the director on the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler in the title role.

Stunning sets and particularly costumes from Santo Loquasto and witty choreography from British dancer turned choreographer Warren Carlyle are a huge part of the rich creative armoury fielded here, while a large orchestra, under the direction of Patrick Vaccariello, may not quite field the 76 trombones promised in one of the show’s signature songs, but refreshingly gets its own board naming every one of its players on the theatre’s hoardings. (If only more musicals in the West End and on Broadway recognised their orchestras in this way).

But – and it’s a big but – Meredith Willson’s 1957 musical is showing its age, and despite some judicious cuts that bring the running time in at under two and a half hours, it frequently feels irredeemably old-fashioned. Retro has its charms, of course, and it’s difficult not to melt when Foster’s Marian Paroo sings such gorgeous melodies as ‘My White Knight’ or ‘Will I Ever Tell You’ (even if some of the keys have had to be transposed to match her lower range). Foster also gets to exercise her famous dance chops that we saw so skilfully deployed on the London stage at the Barbican last summer in Anything Goes, in the giant eruption of movement that is one of Broadway’s oddest break-out songs ‘Shipoopi’, with the equally deft and adept Jackman.

A luxury supporting cast also includes Shuler Hensley (reunited with Jackman from Oklahoma!, in which he played Jud Fry, and now a sidekick of Hill’s), and Tony winners Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell as the town’s Mayor and Mayoress.

Much of this is entirely delightful. For $45, I’d be more than satisfied. But at up to $600, I’d rather spend my money on up to three other shows instead that the same money would buy me elsewhere.

[jo]

Charles Isherwood (erstwhile but fired NYTimes critic) now contributes to BroadwayNews --

Review: A mechanical ‘Music Man’ misses its heart
By Charles Isherwood -5 days ago
It’s obvious to everyone in the theater world that, as Broadway has battered its way through the latest coronavirus surge, the business could use a shot in the proverbial arm.

The highly, if not ecstatically, anticipated revival of “The Music Man” — pandemic-delayed and pandemic-plagued — was the obvious, if not the only, candidate to bring a jolt of much-needed excitement to the business. More’s the pity, then, that this undeniably polished production, with its ticket-sales-galvanizing star, Hugh Jackman, proves to be a sadly mechanical, overproduced and overdesigned revival of a musical that needs tender care to allow its undeniable charms to bloom.

Even when it was first produced, in 1957, the musical was patted on the head as being a quaint bit of Americana, its best musical Tony over the more forward-looking “West Side Story” to this day seeming a bit eyebrow-raising. It does not appear in some major anthologies of the best American musicals.

But the musical, with book, music and — most importantly — lyrics by Meredith Willson, does in fact have the grit of permanence embedded within it. For while its tale, of a lovable con man who falls for a love-averse librarian, might seem a rom-com cliché, Willson’s startling ingenuity in using lyrics to create music, and using lyrics to create character, were radical for the time, as they are radical now. (The last time I reviewed it, I noted that Willson had, in a very different way, both channeled Gilbert and Sullivan and prefigured rap.)

Certainly the new production, directed by Jerry Zaks, doesn’t give short shrift to Willson’s wonderfully coruscating lyrics. For the most part, they come through, even in the huge Winter Garden Theatre, with delightful precision. But what’s missing from this production is that elusive thing, the beating heart of a musical that is fundamentally a love story. Instead, there is a lot of busy stage business.

Jackman, needless to say, is a phenomenally talented and charismatic actor. As Harold Hill, the seller of band instruments and leader of the (fake) band he creates before stealing out of town, Jackman is, as always, a stage wonder. But here his magnetism and dynamism, not inconsiderable heaven knows, get tripped up.

It’s true that words are at the core of the role. Robert Preston, who originated it, was not by any means a great singer, or indeed a singer at all. But Jackman has certainly established himself as a musical theater artist of some renown (his “Oklahoma!” in London remains a major highlight in my memory). Here, unfortunately, his singing is consistently off-pitch and metallic. More disappointingly, he seems to be aiming his performance at the audience like a blazing torchlight, in a way that ill suits an artist of his caliber.

This may be in part the fault of Zaks, who seems determined to turn every one of the show’s more lively numbers — “Seventy-Six Trombones,” “Shipoopi,” “Marian the Librarian” — into an audience-rousing, applause-generating machine. The choreography by Warren Carlyle is superb, but, as with the production’s elaborate set and costume designs, at a certain point overkill sets in. The sets, by Santo Loquasto, are inspired by Grant Wood (the backgrounds, anyway, although there is also an “American Gothic” visual gag), but are overly lavish. The gym looks like a training area for Olympic potentials. Loquasto’s costumes are flagrantly, even vulgarly, overdone.

As Marian, who despite her stern ideals falls for Harold, Sutton Foster sings beautifully, albeit (as has been noted) in lower keys than are traditional. She dances up a dazzling storm. But what’s sorely missing from her performance is the vulnerability — and tenderness — that contrast with Marian’s erudition and righteousness. In attempting to make Marian a more independent-minded woman (the revival sensibly uses the more lyrically dense version of “My White Knight” to connect Marian’s love of words with Harold’s verbosity), Foster and Zaks have rendered her a sort of zombie: At first a chilly automaton, and then…a melted automaton, struck by love.

Among the supporting cast, Jayne Houdyshell as the mayor’s wife fares significantly better than the also-estimable Jefferson Mays, who, in accord with the overall production, is a bit louder than he needs to be. Marie Mullen as Mrs. Paroo strikes just the right note, wry but warm.

Certainly this production is the work of first-rate theater artists. But despite their efforts, there is a fatal lack of chemistry, that admittedly vague and undefinable element, in this revival — between the two leads, regrettably — but also in the whole shebang, as I expect Iowans would say.

[jo]

On the dismissal of Isherwood from NYTimes --

Vulture report :
(Interesting because there is a connection to Scott Rudin and Rick Miramontez) - an inside look at the world of theatre critics)

FEB. 22, 2017
Why Was Times Theater Critic Charles Isherwood Fired?
By Boris Kachka


Charles Isherwood woke up on the morning of February 3 with one of the best jobs in the country: second-string theater critic for the New York Times. Around noon that day, he was summoned to the Times’s 40th Street office, along with representatives of his union, the NewsGuild of New York. They were called into a room with two senior editors and two other executives. Isherwood was confronted with nine of his own emails, which the paper claimed as evidence that the critic had violated ethical rules. Shortly afterward, he was escorted out of the building. In the two weeks since, no one who knows the details has spoken publicly, and those Times-watchers and Broadway people who don’t know can hardly talk about anything else. It’s not every day that a Times employee — never mind one of the most prominent theater critics in the country — is so publicly given the boot.


What follows is an attempt to get to the bottom of the story, based on conversations with more than a dozen people close to the events. The Times insists a crucial triggering incident is missing from the timeline; if so, it’s been very tightly held (maybe even from Isherwood), and we may not know what it is until he and the paper meet again, in arbitration.

In the twelve years of his suddenly truncated tenure, Isherwood had crossed the country scouting regional theaters and championing future stars like Tracy Letts and Stephen Karam. Along the way, he made a couple of theater-insider friends who the Times seems to feel affected his objectivity (and his loyalty). But the bigger issue may have been his rivals — the editors he clashed with, and especially Ben Brantley, the lead critic. When Isherwood arrived in 2004, he was under the impression that Brantley would soon retire. But as he stayed on, Isherwood grew increasingly, vocally frustrated, both with his number-two position and with the paper’s shrinking review space. According to a source, there were two early “dustups” between the critics, but, over the last five years, no contact at all.

Shortly after Isherwood’s firing, a notice was sent out to Times critics assuring them that this was a dismissal for cause — not a layoff. The following Tuesday, the paper posted a job listing for the position. Last week, Isherwood began pursuing arbitration. The fact that his dismissal resulted from a thorough search of his emails, which were handpicked for potential infractions, is extremely rare. Current and past employees remember it happening only once in recent years, for severe wrongdoing. They called it “extraordinary” and “inexplicable.”

Isherwood declined to comment for this story, but NewsGuild president Grant Glickson told me the Times had “drastically overreacted” in terminating him. “He has done nothing to warrant dismissal, unless remarking to a friend that he was disappointed that the Times was cutting its arts coverage was an offense.” The Times insists there was another incident that led to both the email search and the firing, but released only the following statement: “While we don’t comment on specific personnel matters, the scenario of someone simply being difficult or publicly negative about the Times or colleagues would never lead to the highly unusual step of a review of an employee’s email. Only something more serious would result in such an action.”


The emails brought up on that Friday (“Black Friday,” as Isherwood privately calls it) were communications with several Broadway producers — mostly the powerful movie and theater mogul Scott Rudin — as well as two publicists, Philip Rinaldi and Rick Miramontez. Isherwood rudely disparaged Brantley to Miramontez, and also, separately, to a friend at a ballet company. He also complained to the latter that Brantley had blocked him from reviewing Hamilton, even though he’d covered Lin-Manuel Miranda’s previous show, In the Heights.

Disparagement is a tricky area. Guidelines on collegial conduct — the “rules of the road” — are alluded to, but not specified, in the Times’s Ethical Journalism handbook, and Isherwood was charged with violating them. On its face, that certainly wouldn’t be cause for dismissal or email searches. “I just thought it was theatrical, the competition between them,” says Miramontez. “Spicy and energetic — I thought it was campy! If you go back to the glory days of thirty years ago, this is much ado about nothing.”

Isherwood also told a couple of producers about diminishing arts coverage at the Times, though they probably could have gleaned the same information by reading Deadline, which broke a story about consolidation in the arts pages last November. He was accused of threatening Rinaldi with a negative review; having not been invited to an early press performance, Isherwood had written him to say that he now had the flu and “didn’t know if he could do it justice” on a subsequent night. Rinaldi doesn’t remember that email at all. A joke to producer Jeffrey Richards about a legalistic correction Richards had asked for (on a story Isherwood hadn’t written) was perceived as somehow out of bounds.

Communications with Rudin were a bit more numerous and serious. Isherwood asked Rudin why his name wasn’t on a blurb in an ad; he also shared information about the paper’s thinking regarding year-end coverage of plays he wasn’t working on (while disparaging both Brantley and Hamilton). And a third email had to do with Stephen Karam’s The Humans, winner of the Best Play Tony for 2016. The Times highlighted an email to Rudin saying something along the lines of, “I’ll bat it out of the park,” on a Broadway review.

There are hard rules against promising favorable coverage at the Times and elsewhere. Rudin says this exchange with Isherwood was the result of a request that Isherwood re-review a play, period. The play had very recently transferred from an off-Broadway production, which Isherwood had raved about and Rudin hadn’t produced, and Times policy dictated that a second review so close to the first wasn’t mandatory. “Rudin was probably saying it’s important that you give it your best shot,” says Miramontez, who also handled publicity for the play — and calls this sort of interaction “a very common thing in our world.”

What’s “very common” in the course of social or professional exchanges can shade over into ethical infractions for a critic. This is especially so in Broadway theater, where producers often invest in multiple shows per season, but there can only be 41 running at a time — which means that, if you consider social relationships disqualifying, having one producer friend could cut you out of reviewing a good chunk of the season. (For the record, Isherwood’s reviews of these producers’ work ranged from negative to ecstatic.) It’s a small enough world that telegraphing forthcoming coverage in the paper of record risks spreading gossip like wildfire. But missing from the accounts we’ve heard about the emails is any evidence of favor-trading or real corruption. Everyone I spoke to said that while Isherwood could be very ornery, they couldn’t imagine him betraying the reader’s trust. “Charles isn’t that kind of person,” says Miramontez. “He’s very square and serious about his job.”

But what could possibly have caused the paper to start digging into his emails in the first place — something that almost never happens at the paper? Shortly after the firing, Times reporters worried that their employer was just trawling indiscriminately. Rumors began circulating. Some pointed to an arch Facebook post from the Tuesday before Isherwood was fired, in which he posted an online piece with the introduction: “This may never see print — welcome to the new world of the New York Times.” In fact, by the time of that post, the writing may have already been on the wall.

Even before Black Friday, Isherwood and his editor, Scott Heller, were having a very rocky week. They had two tiffs that may or may not have triggered the email search. (The Times maintains they didn’t.) First, there was a double review of two shows that Isherwood had seen in New Haven the week before — the same review Isherwood snidely posted on Facebook the next day. Heller was increasingly asking that regional reviews be packaged together as trend pieces — a tendency Isherwood viewed as diminishing his reach. Per Heller’s initial request, Isherwood tenuously linked the two plays together in a review that he filed on Monday, January 30. Then Heller told him their layout had changed and asked him to decouple the reviews into two shorter pieces. Isherwood refused.

The following day — the Tuesday of the snarky post — Isherwood had another argument with Heller. Months earlier, the critic had expressed his interest in profiling a big Broadway star of the current season. But after learning that Rudin had negotiated a place for a profile in another publication (which happened to be New York), he wrote to the producer to express his regret over not having the chance to write it for the Times. Rudin replied that the agreement had in fact fallen apart, meaning no other publication had an exclusive on it, and he’d be happy to help Isherwood secure the story. Isherwood took that news directly to Heller, but instead of getting the assignment, he was strongly admonished for “negotiating” with Rudin.

Rudin confirms the outlines of that narrative, and makes his sympathies perfectly clear. “I would always happily have Charles write anything he wanted about our work,” Rudin says. “I would not put anything or anybody I care about near Scott Heller” — which he also said in his email to Isherwood. Rudin is about as secretive about his antipathy for Heller as Isherwood is about his own for Brantley. “I think under him the section has become a joke,” Rudin says. “I think Charles doesn’t suffer fools and Scott Heller is a fool.” Rudin’s refusal to deal with Isherwood’s supervisor, while talking it down directly to the critic, couldn’t have sat well with the editors.

Someone close to decisions made at the Times rejected the idea that these incidents had motivated the search, without volunteering an alternative. But whatever the final straw, Isherwood hadn’t been happy for a long time, and he wasn’t shy about saying so. It wasn’t just a couple of emails — he took swipes at Brantley’s work everywhere from private conversations to public panels. “I think they were on a bit of a witch hunt,” says one theater veteran. “Any reason to get rid of this guy who was a very good critic with a very bad attitude.”

The battle lines in the Isherwood–Brantley turf war were familiar to anyone even mildly interested in New York theater. They had carved out their respective beats: Brantley would handle London plays and all the big Broadway shows, while Isherwood stalked regional theaters. If a play he had reviewed transferred to Broadway, he would follow it there. But Brantley always had first pick. Friends say Isherwood denigrated what Brantley loved — and not just Hamilton, which Isherwood felt he should have been allowed to review. Even in Times roundup features, he would mock Brantley-lauded revivals like Exit the King (which he said “proves that it’s possible to die of mugging”).

Brantley would occasionally rip into shows such as August: Osage County that Isherwood had championed in regional runs. But he was generally buttoned-up about their differences. Isherwood was a lot less so. To make matters worse, last year Isherwood asked culture editor Danielle Mattoon for a promotion to co-chief theater critic, an arrangement the art and movie critics share. He was turned down and wound up storming out of the office.

“Most of us were thinking, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? You have the best job in the world,’” says a colleague. “If I had the role of second-string critic, where you could discover things and make a different kind of mark … I don’t think there was a lot of sympathy for the way he was behaving.”

Yet the dismissal still confuses this colleague, who notes, “It’s very rare for the Times to fire somebody. They could have shifted him to the municipal-bonds beat and the guild wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, so it is kind of shocking. But Charles had no rabbi left at the paper, nobody really protecting him, and maybe he was aware of that and gave up, or kept pushing the limits.”

Isherwood recently had drinks with another publicly fired Times employee, former executive editor Jill Abramson. She is as puzzled as anyone by what happened. “Ill feelings between critics at the Times was not unusual — it breeds competition, and sometimes anger,” she says. “But it’s hard for me to believe, knowing Charles as I do, that he would do something that was wrong.” She says that over gin and tonics — light on the tonic — she “assured him that the hurt would subside and that he would be perfectly, perfectly fine.”

Heller told colleagues he had nothing to do with Isherwood’s firing. It was Mattoon who attended the “Black Friday” meeting. (Both Heller and Mattoon declined to comment, referring queries to a Times spokesperson.) Another friend of Isherwood’s thinks Heller could at least have done more to heal the Isherwood–Brantley rift: “It would have been better for the two of them to have a relationship.”

Last month, the Times released a report recommending editorial streamlining and a decreased emphasis on print sections. Layoffs and buyouts are expected to follow, mostly targeting editors. It’s in that general context that some wonder if Isherwood’s firing was an easy way to get rid of someone making far above guild minimum, without having to pay a pension or severance. (The Times strongly denies any connection between the two situations.) The paper might also welcome the opportunity to hire a theater critic who’s younger, and maybe not a white man.

The ad for the position asked for candidates who’d work well with editors, interact with readers, and explore “new story forms.” It also included the line: “While a background writing about theater is a plus, it is not a prerequisite.” That doesn’t sound like a job for an old-school theater critic, or one quite so intimately familiar with the players as Charles Isherwood was. Rudin has some controversial opinions, but what he says about his associate would be hard to refute. “Charles was a highly respected and very well-regarded critic,” he says, “and it’s a huge loss to the paper and to the theater community. He championed a lot of shows that needed him. He made a difference in the ecology of the theater.”

TAGS: THEATER THEATRE BROADWAY MEDIA

[jo]

A five-star review from the heart - most likely resonating with how it has also drawn the same feeling of joy for those who have seen the show ( except some critics )

stagezine.com/the-music-man-a-joyride-from-start-to-finish/

THE MUSIC MAN': A JOYRIDE FROM START TO FINISH

HomeBroadway Reviews


AMERICANA AT ITS VERY BEST: The cast of 'The Music Man.' Photo: Joan Marcus.
‘THE MUSIC MAN’: A JOYRIDE FROM START TO FINISH
February 16, 2022 Broadway Reviews
‘THE MUSIC MAN’: Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster & cast. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.


THE MUSIC MAN
Book, music & lyrics by Meredith Willson
Based on a story by Meredith Willson & Franklin Lacey
Directed by Jerry Zaks
Choreographed by Warren Carlyle
Winter Garden Theatre
1634 Broadway at 50th Street
(212-239-6200), www.MusicManOnBroadway.com



By David NouNou

Americana at its very best.

I have been called a traditionalist, and I am proud of it. Being one of the few remaining dinosaurs who saw the original version of The Music Man in 1959 at the Majestic Theatre, starring Robert Preston and Barbara Cook, I can’t say I was overwhelmed by it. I was only a little kid, I thought it was too long and I didn’t understand the lingo being spoken on stage. The things that excited me most were so many people dancing, singing and having a good time on stage. I was dazzled by the sets and costumes. I actually wanted to learn to play a musical instrument so I could be a part of the show and play in Professor Harold Hill’s band.

This brings us to 2022. I never learned to play a musical instrument, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate the complexities of what it takes to write a musical. This is a period piece for sure and for modern audiences it may seem stilted. However, one must see it from the context of when it was written and about the times in which it was written. Meredith Willson, being a native of Iowa, wrote a beautifully complex and textured tale about the people he knew best at the turn of the 20th century in the small town of River City, Iowa. He also wrote the entire score which defines all the characters and their attitudes in the score.

Into this small, sleepy, and unfriendly town storms Professor Harold Hill (Hugh Jackman), trying to sell these cold and gullible folks musical instruments and band uniforms for their children. Once he fleeces his sheep, he usually runs out of town with the money and leaves them with no band. In this instance, there is a little hitch by the name of Marian the librarian (Sutton Foster) who is on to Professor Hill’s antics. In turn, one gets to meet all the colorful townspeople and their quirks.

Once you get accustomed to the lingo used—the likes of jokes from Captain Billy’s whiz bag, Sen-Sen, “so’s your old man,” dime novels, libertine men, “scarlet women and shameless music”—and get in step with the proceedings, it becomes a joyride from start to finish.

This revival brings back to life the magic that was Broadway. A musical that has an orchestra pit, an actual visible conductor, and an orchestra playing real instruments that you can hear and feel the music with no prerecorded and overmiked tracks. An actual live orchestra and a stageful of marvelous performers acting, singing, hoofing and giving it their all. What a joy to finally see a revival or any musical with a cast of 42 people filling the stage and each playing their designated role and not have to watch 20 people going in and out of different characters and play chorus members as well.

Hugh Jackman may not be Harold Hill of 1912, but he is certainly Professor Hill for 2022 and hopefully for years to come. His charm and energy are boundless, he sings sublimely, looks divine, and he is a hoofing Harold Hill. What more can you ask of the man?

Sutton Foster gives us a different interpretation of Marian Paroo, the librarian. Unlike any of her predecessors who came off as sweet and ladylike, this young lady takes no guff from any one, stands her ground, and isn’t waiting for a white knight to rescue her. She is in complete control.

The townsfolk are priceless: Marie Mullen as wise Mrs. Paroo is an Irish charmer; Jayne Houdyshell as Mrs. Shin, the Mayor’s wife, is a showstopper with every move and glance. Jefferson Mays as Mayor Shin is perfect at getting flummoxed easily. The quartet of Phillip Boykin, Eddie Korbich, Nicholas Ward and Daniel Torres is impressive, and their harmonizing is a constant delight throughout the show. One will especially fall in love with Benjamin Pajak as Winthrop Paroo; that was the role I was willing to learn an instrument for when I was a kid and wanted to be in the show to play Winthrop.

To my glee, Warren Carlyle has kept the infectious period dances and his excellent dancers of all ages keep in step. Jerry Zaks, usually an expert director on extravaganzas, could have decluttered the sets a bit and instructed Santo Loquasto, the designer, a more realistic vision than just a side of a barn or painted backdrops. These are mere trifles for an evening that explodes with joy and heart; the musical theatre’s cup has runneth over.

Please indulge me in being able to thank my parents for taking me to the theatre at an early age and introducing me to the magic that was Broadway to such an extravaganza as The Music Man. Watching Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster and the rest of the glorious cast took me back decades to being a small child who wanted to learn the cornet so he could be in a show. I urge parents to take their children to see this glorious version The Music Man and know what magic Broadway can create if done well, and who knows— maybe someday your kids will thank you, too.



Edited by Scott Harrah
Published February 16, 2022
Reviewed at February 15, 2022 press performance.

[jo]

caroleditosti.com/2022/02/20/hugh-jackmans-indelible-winning-con-in-the-music-man-just-unbeatable/


The most perfect, best-written, most heartfelt review of The Music Man.

Most every key scene is examined and analyzed as to how it contributes to the story-telling and characterizations.

The portrayal and take on Harold Hill by Hugh Jackman is analyzed from an acting viewpoint!



Theatre critics who did not see the same perspective did not do their jobs well!

CONGRATULATIONS TO Carol DiTosti for this well-thought out analysis and full appreciation of the creative and artistic vision that guided this revival of The Music Man.



This should be sent out to each and every Tony voter!

CAROLE DI TOSTI
NYC SKYLINE
HOME

‘Hugh Jackman’s Indelible, Winning Con in “The Music Man,” Just Unbeatable!’
FEB 20

Posted by caroleditosti



Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster and the cast of The Music Man (Photo credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Historically, America is the land of con artists and showmen. Do you know the difference? As a relatable example there is David Hannum who in the 1850s bought the “Cardiff Giant,” a stone statue he unwittingly believed to be real (the giant fake was made in Iowa). As did its previous owner, Hannum charged admission for viewings. When P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman portrayed Barnum in The Greatest Showman) couldn’t purchase the Cardiff Giant for $50,000, he made his own plaster statue, called Hannum’s statue the fake, and charged more money advertising his as the “real” one. Hannum sued Barnum and referring to Barnum’s patrons said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” not realizing he, too, had been duped. The suit failed when the originator of the hoax “came clean.” Interestingly, all three entrepreneurs probably kept the money “they earned” providing a thrilling show. In keeping with the great cons of America, history is silent about whether patrons got their money back.

This exploration of that type of con is at the core of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, which I’ve come to appreciate on another level with this revival at the Wintergarden Theatre, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. Along with these romantic leads are Shuler Hensley, Jefferson Mays, Jayne Houdyshell and Marie Mullen. All are Tony Award winners All give humorous, memorable performances in this fanciful, exuberant, profoundly conceived production (directed by Jerry Zaks and choreographed by Warren Carlyle) about small town America, its bucolic “nothing is happening here” townsfolk, and the burgeoning love between two needy, flawed individuals who grasp at hope in each other.




The cast of The Music Man (Photo credit: Julieta Cervantes)
With book, music and lyrics by Meredith Willson and story by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey, the great con is spun by a magic-making, uber-talented, artiste extraordinaire that all fall in love with by the conclusion (including the audience). That is all except non-believer, malcontent salesman Charlie Cowell (the excellent, hyper-caustic Remy Auberjonois who was in Death of a Salesman). He’s the “villain” who seeks vengeance to expose Hill as a wicked, flim-flam man.

Hugh Jackman is spot-on in his modern interpretation of the Professor Henry Hill “brand” of “music man.” He and Zaks so get this role as Jackman makes it his own. He exudes the energy packed, brilliant, larger-than-life loving character so that you want to stay with him wherever he takes you. After seeing his performance, I believe in pied pipers who don’t need music to make you theirs.

The criticism that he is not edgy is questionable. If Jackman’s Hill were sinister, few would believe his sincerity in a small town that prides itself on suspicion and being “Iowa Stubborn” Would the women be so taken with his graceful, smooth, charmingly flirtatious manner? He is a swan among the ungainly quacking mallards and especially his nemesis, the punchy, exasperated, malaproping Mayor Shinn (the always hysterical and exceptional Jefferson Mays) who gaslights the town with his own con. That this genius craftsman of BS has an irresistible delivery reveals Jackman enjoying expanding the graceful Professor in pure entertainment with every precious breath and every savvy movement he expends, as he inhabits his refreshing version of Hill for the ages.




Sutton Foster, Benjamin Pajak, Hugh Jackman and the cast of The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Acutely, Hill’s seductive, adorable, spirited demeanor is dangerously addictive. The happy-go-lucky showman is all about getting others to believe in and enjoy themselves. From that elixir, there is no safe return and the crash, if there is one, is emotionally devastating. How Zaks, Jackman, the cast and creative team spin this rendering is solid and logical throughout, giving this extraordinary revival a different feel, understanding and vision that should not be underestimated or ignored.

Throughout the dance numbers, which are beautifully conceived with wit and substance, Jackman’s lead is ebullient, light, lithe. This is especially so during his convincing, playful seduction in the number “Marian the Librarian” (Warrent Carlyle’s ballet in soft shoe tempo is just great). Jackman’s sensual, boyish suppleness contrasted with Sutton Foster’s stiff reticence in Marian counterpoint are superb together.

For the song identifying the Iowan’s walled stronghold against strangers (“Iowa Stubborn”) Hill’s great challenge, Zaks stages River City citizens huddled together in a circular clump with stern looks and unsmiling determination. Initially, with Hill they pride themselves on being cold steel like Marian who is even more icy remote than they are. However, because of Charlie Cowell’s challenge that Iowa territory is impossible for salesmen, Hill takes that bait and rises to the occasion. He plies his delightful winsomeness with enough sincerity and great good will to surreptitiously penetrate their pride.



Jefferson Mays and the cast of The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Not only are the townsfolk splintered from their stubborn resolve because of his contagious enthusiasm, his youthfulness retains a sociability that is able to connect with young and old. Indeed, Hill offers them something that no one else who has come to their town has ever offered: happiness, hope, fantasy, the power to believe; to think something is so and it becomes so (the “Think System” re-framed from “the power of positive thinking.”) Jackman’s Hill is a practiced master at human nature-buffeted by life’s heart-breaks-that create the foundation in the soul that hungers to believe in something or someone. Of course, he is a master at this, because he, first and foremost, is starving, a clue to this Hill portrayal, upon which rests the arc of development and all the character interactions. It is also the theme of “Sadder But Wiser Girl” that he sings in knowing “wisdom” with buddy Marcellus Washburn (the excellent Shuler Hensley).

The brilliance of this production is that Hill’s charismatic delivery of the dangerous idea is palpable, adorable and expansive. As apparently unrealistic as Hill’s disarming positivity is, it is like manna from heaven for these homely folks, who cannot resist just a taste. And Jackman’s Hill enjoys spoon feeding it to them like sugar, until they are hooked. Interestingly, he also is hooked…on their joyous response to him.




Sutton Foster in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
In his backdoor discussions with his comrade in arms, the affable and in love Marcellus, the winning Professor Hill has no disdain or ridicule for those he mesmerizes. He enjoys the challenge (more in the style of 110 in the Shade’s rainmaker Bill Starbuck) of instilling confidence in others and, in return, receiving what he needs, enjoyment, fun, affirmation. He is the antithesis of the bombastic, arrogant traveling salesman loudmouths like Charlie Cowell and the others in the rhythmically pounding opening train number “Rock Island.” (another superb staging by Zaks, et. al.)

Willson reveals the vital difference between them and Hill, as they ride the rails and complain about how hard their job is because of encroaching progress. What an incredible opening scene that gives the set up (costumes, staging, sets, music, sound, tone, tenor). Challenged by their comments that Iowa is an impossible territory, Hill shows himself up to the task, gets off the train, turns to the audience and presents Professor Harold Hill. Just looking at Jackman’s unbashed, open smile and shining spirit, we believe as Mrs. Paroo does, that he can do nearly anything, even if it is getting her very shy son Winthrop to speak which Winthrop does in a damburst of excitement and emotion that never stops afterward.



(L to R): Phillip Boykin, Nicholas Ward, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Torres, and Eddie Korbich in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
His product, unlike Charley Cowell’s and the others, is intangible. Thus, taking folks’ money is done quickly, painlessly for much more is being given, including a loving manner and wish to spread joy. In this version of Hill it is his endearing vulnerability to love that Jackman makes believable in his deepening interactions with Marian whose loving support he has, before the two of them realize it. Jackman and Foster construct this surprising discovery beautifully in the Footbridge scene (“Till There Was You,” and the melding of the relationship as they conjoin their singing of the double reprise “Goodnight My Someone” and “Seventy-Six Trombones”).



The town’s seduction is inevitable after “Ya Got Trouble” and “Seventy-Six Trombones,” an incredible dance number (and pantomimed instrumentation) that Jackman and the cast just kill. River City has “swallowed his line,” (the fishing metaphor is used throughout) as does young Winthrop (Benjamin Pajak in a show stealing performance) who is thrilled when his mother, like the other townspeople, signs on for instruments, uniforms and instruction books to form the showy band Hill promises for the absolute thrill of it. That they must learn to play is subtly whisked off until “later,” like “will-o-the-wisp” magic Jackman’s Hill seamlessly performs.




Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster and the cast of The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Hill is gloriously, attractively spell-binding. He draws the town to him bringing togetherness and good will, that goes a long way to diffuse the backbiting of the women against Marian’s standoffishness (“Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little”). He helps to mend the ladies’ divisiveness and further draws Marian to them and himself. Humorously, he unifies feuding officials in the exquisite harmony of a barbershop quartet that they can’t seem to get enough of, once he starts them off on the right chords (“Sincere,” “Goodnight Ladies,” “Lida Rose”). One by one each potentially thorny group falls under Hill’s flirtatious, delectable, gentle power and inspirational artistic encouragement. Talk about soft power flying under the radar, he hits folks’ hearts for a bullseye every time.




Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
In beautifully staged moments by Zaks, we see Hill’s influence on the Mayor’s wife, Eulalie Shinn and her friends who create dance numbers and other entertainments. Jayne Houdyshell as Shinn is marvelous and LOL in her dancing and primping poses after Hill’s maximum attentions. The costuming for these scenes is exceptional. Throughout the costumes are a take-off of 1912 fashion but with the variety of patterns, in some scenes earthen tones, other scenes fun hats, shoes and accoutrements thanks to Santo Loquasto who also did the scenic design.

Marian’s costumes are straight-laced without frills by comparison; her hair (Luc Verschueren for Campbell Young Associates) like the other ladies is in fashion, an up-sweep like her mother’s, Mrs. Paroo (the wonderful Maureen Mullen). Attention in this detailed crafting reveals Marian’s restraint, her career and character, providing the subtext and interesting contrast to the other open-handed, more extravagantly dressed woman. Eulalie and her hens are encouraged to believe in themselves in Hill’s sincere admiration as they ooze his charm back at him and titter. In the case of Marian’s response to Hill’s starlight, she moves from grimace to smile to grin.





Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Importantly, the women are drawn into Hill’s net, however, it’s mutual. Jackman’s Hill is having a rollicking time becoming enamored of them. This portrayal makes complete sense. Because he is lured by their, acceptance and trust in mutual feeling, he is unable to escape when the love net closes around him. Jackman and Zaks have broadened that net to include the townspeople’s acceptance and love as well as Marian’s, her mother’s and Winthrop’s. Zaks acutely shepherds the actors to forge that budding love and trust with specificity and feeling each time they share a scene (i.e. the fishing scene with Hill and Winthrop).

Fear has no place in Hill’s magical world. So when it attempts to enter in the form of Mayor Shinn’s grave doubts about Hill (though Shinn’s motives are financially suspect) he is misled by Marian and his officials, who by this point in time, understand Hill is bringing new life to the community. Thus, they allow themselves to be distracted away from Shinn’s mission to verify Hill’s identity. It’s apparent that with the exception of Mayor Shinn whose agenda Hill upends by dunning his new pool table, the town’s spirited happiness is heartfelt. One wonders what their lives were like before his enchantments blinded them? Or did he give them a new way of seeing? And what was Hill’s life like traveling one step ahead of the sheriff before he hit River City, an unintentional stop on his route to anywhere U.S.A.?


Hugh Jackman and the cast of The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Clues are revealed in the large set backdrops of the Grant Wood style paintings (Regionalism) that are at once simplistic and complicated in their two-dimensionality, brimming full of sub-text. These so brilliantly reveal the time, place and characters with details of tone, tenor and color. This is especially so against a green rolling hills Grant Wood backdrop, where the tiny, animated, red, Wells Fargo Wagon races down a hill in the distance as it approaches River City. The audience gasped in awe at the ingenious contrivance. Then, they gasped even louder as the “larger-than-life” Wells Fargo Wagon materialized on stage. Pulled by a well-groomed, shiny-coated, smallish-looking “Clydesdale,” Hill beamed atop the wagon as it stopped, the cast sang “The Wells Fargo Wagon” exuberantly, and Jackman rhythmically tossed out the brown paper wrapped “instruments.” Poignantly, Pajak’s Winthrop sings, lisp and all, completing the effect. Pure dynamite!

This is the show’s “Singing in the Rain,” moment. It is the still point in time that clarifies and represents the whole; when action, event, music, symbolism, lighting and spectacle reveal the theme and its significance to the characters and audience. It is here that we understand the treasure that Hill brings, the heightened glory he coalesces in a happening that the townspeople and a now confident Winthrop (whom we fall in love with along with Hill) will never forget. And for that reason, Marian destroys the evidence that can sink Hill. It’s a stirring, fabulous end to Act I.





Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster and the cast in The Music Man at the Wintergarden Theatre (Photo Credit: Joan Marcus)
By the beginning of Act II, Hill’s invested emotional interest in Marian is revealed in “Shipoopi,” the silly-grand singing and dance number with the entire cast, and colorful, shimmering costumes, led by Marcellus who reveals his contentment with his wife. As friend and confidante Marcellus is also Hill’s foil. Living a fulfilled life in a small town, his life contrasts with the emptiness of Hill’s tired wanderings. This is underscored through Hill’s previous interactions with Marcellus, in their fine duet, “The Sadder But Wiser Girl,” and brief discussion of his former inability to settle down which Marcellus encourages him to do in River City because he can introduce him to a lovely girl. However, Hill has already met a lovely girl who rejects him, and as we note at the top of the musical, Hill enjoys a challenge. Jackman nails Hill’s subtle bravado with class, nuance and balance, never over-doing it. He will have Marian and she will have him.


Shuler Hensley in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
Sutton Foster’s Marian is the challenge Hill finds stimulating. She falls in love, her hard-heart melting in attenuating stages: after Mother Paroo’s pressure in “If You don’t Mind My Saying So,” her own internal pressure in “Goodnight, My Someone” and “My White Knight,” in Hill’s sweetly, gorgeous, “bad-boy” pestering in “Marian the Librarian,” and most importantly after she sees Hill’s beloved influence on Winthrop (“Wells Fargo Wagon,” “Gary Indiana,” the fishing scene). As Marian, Foster’s change of heart toward Hill is superbly wrought by degrees; her stance and body relaxing remarkably as they dance in “Shipoopi.” And the relationship Foster and Jackman forge in its progressive development toward love is believable, touching. By the time the scene with the kiss arrives, their bond is manifest; the long kiss, wistfully enjoyed by Jackman fans, brought faint and not so faint audience gasps; the longing and hunger in the characters dangerously apparent.

For love’s reality is an obstacle that Hill recognizes (“Till There Was You” reprise). Charlie Cowell intends to provoke the town to scourge Hill with a “tar and feathering.” It is at this point that Marcellus’ injunction that Marian is doing the conning and Hill has to leave or be damned, resonates. But he can’t leave; he must face the music or rather, lack of it.

Foster shines as she attempts to gaslight sexual predator Auberjonois’ Cowell with flirting and a kiss. And in the realistic fight scene (one punch is always sufficient) between Cowell and Hill, the professor vindicates Marian’s reputation that Cowell besmirches. I love how Foster sexually presents herself to Cowell, breaking the third wall and eliciting the audience’s encouragement; she twits the scene for all its worth.



Benjamin Pajak and Marie Mullen in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
But the con is over. Humorously and ironically, Hill is a victim of Mother Paroo’s use of his “Think System.” And of course, his own need to be loved traps him. Thus, he admits the truth to an upset Winthrop who forgives him and with Marian, both encourage him to leave. The sacrifice of the three for each other is perfection. When Hill is arrested, Jackman’s emotional response in the scene is smashing, as is the drama created by Pajak, Auberjonois, Foster and the other cast members. The question remains. Will the town forgive Hill, as Marian and Winthrop have? Will they acknowledge that he has given them something more priceless than a boy’s band? It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

In this revival the intentionally “un-dangerous,” genius entrepreneur professor, like those entrepreneurs of the Cardiff Giant, created a daily thrill. Specifically, Hill’s music man encourages the town to launch out on a new road. It turns into their own growth and ultimate benefit in merging community, good will and love. In exchange for instruments and uniforms, he has bestowed the citizens with an ineffable gift (that Marian and Eulalie Shinn encourage the others to stand for). As Mayor Shin sees their unity and hears his son play, Hill’s “Think System” catches communal fire. The joy and warmth that Hill gave is returned; he is loved and forgiven. And Charlie Cowen leaves a sadder and unrepentant man.


Jane Houdyshell in The Music Man (Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes)
In the end scene as the townsfolk’s vision moves from what is to what each parent thinks/imagines Hill’s orchestral direction to be with love, the miraculous occurs. Hill is redeemed as the band emerges in sound and sensory vision. Announcing the Finale, Winthrop/Pajak blows a vibrant, bold horn. The cast emerges in full band regalia, sings, plays and dances, with Foster and Jackman front and center leading the charge. Dazzling fun profoundly realized.

The Music Man is a spectacle that is incredibly rich with visual movement, vibrance, striking hues and emotional musical grist brought together with sterling performances that are divine brush strokes. The story is a faceted jewel, the characters inhabited by these multi-talented acting greats are uniquely American. The sound/music delivery-technical and vocal- is as fine as can be. I heard every word, the glorious harmonies, spun out rhythms and witty lyrics in the compelling choral numbers (“Rock Island,” “Ya Got Trouble,” Shipoopi,” “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little,” “Marian the Librarian,” Seventy-Six Trombones”). What a pleasure, especially in the large musical numbers; this has not always been the case on Broadway (post-pandemic and certainly not pre-pandemic).

The Smithsonian Institution ranks The Music Man as one of the “great glories of American popular culture.” When it premiered on December 19, 1957, it was a smash hit that ran 1375 performances. It won five Tony Awards including Best Musical. The original cast album held the number one position on the
Billboard charts and stayed on the album charts for 245 weeks. The recording won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Original Cast Album.

In this amazing revival all of the main actors are Tony Award winners. Sutton Foster is a two-time Tony Award winner. Hugh Jackman is a two-time Tony Award, Grammy Award, and Emmy Award-winning star. Director Jerry Zaks is a four-time Tony Award winner and Choreographer Warren Carlyle is a Tony Award winner. Additionally, the creative team is equally sterling and award studded. It 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).

This production with this cast, director, choreographer and technical team will never happen again in your lifetime. Considering what the cast, crew and production team went through to present The Music Man opening night this February 10th, 2022, it has been a labor of love that underscores every dance step, every note played, every trill, every laugh by the actors, the musicians, everyone. It is a one-of-a-kind revival that is breathtaking. Do what you can to see it. I will go again if I can get tickets. Here is their website for arrangements. musicmanonbroadway.com/

[jo]

These are the credentials of the writer --

About caroleditosti
Carole Di Tosti, Ph.D. is an Entertainment Journalist, novelist, poet and playwright. Writing is my life. When I don't write I am desolate. Carole Di Tosti has over 1800 articles, reviews, sonnets and other online writings. Carole Di Tosti writes for Blogcritics.com, Theater Pizzazz and other New York theater websites. Carole Di Tost free-lanced for VERVE and wrote for Technorati for 2 years. Some of the articles are archived. Carole Di Tosti covers premiere film festivals in the NY area:: Tribeca FF, NYFF, DOC NYC, Hamptons IFF, NYJewish FF, Athena FF. She also covers SXSW film. Carole Di Tosti's novel 'Peregrine: The Ceremony of Power,' is being released in November-December. Her two-act plays 'Edgar,' 'The Painter on His Way to Work,' and 'Pandemics' in the process of being submitted for representation and production.

[mamaleh]

DiTosti's piece is the most spot-on, incisive analysis of this crowd-pleasing revival of THE MUSIC MAN I have yet read. This is the review that should be picked up by news outlets across the country, not the elitist nonsense of critics such as those at the NY Times or Washington Post who trashed the show and would have you believe that a darker, more sinister and sleazier Harold Hill would more believably win over the denizens of a small, Midwestern city. Ha!

Ellen

[ruby]

100% agree that this review reflects well the dynamic that takes place between the cast and the audience every performance. The high minded reviews that read like a term paper for their English Lit class would be well served to read the room. Maybe they’re missing something?

[jo]

Why should a revival be a carbon copy of the original production? It seems many reviews are anchored on the lazy view that if the leads of the revival do not copy all that the original leads did - that it is a failure.

robert Preston was supposedly not a terrific singer nor an outstanding dancer and the movie adaptation ( no clips of the stage show) made full use of his gift of rhythm and speak-sing. Will revivals of The Music Man always be anchored by what and how he did it in the original show/movie?

Look at the new Company & the revised Oklahoma!...and the film remake of West Side Story - some strong changes to already classic originals and yet there is hardly any criticism at all

[jo]

Not a review -- but some critical thinking on the substance of The Music Man --

From BWWW --

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THE MUSIC MAN Reviews
#161
Posted: 2/21/22 at 8:43am
leefowler said: ""I agree. The show is not a My Fair Lady or West Side Story."
It's worth noting that West Side Story lost the Tony to The Music Man"


And was deserving of it, as it was as innovative in its way as WSS. Those rhythm songs were something new and different, and extremely effective. The show was politically satirical in a way unseen since Finian's Rainbow, yet was a much more grounded show (I roll my eyes at people who disparage Music Man as a "rah-rah-USA! USA! All American show". There is a nasty underbelly of prejudice and fear of intellectualism running underneath it's cozy exterior--a prejudice and a fear of intellectualism easily exploited by a con man...sound familiar?) The Music Man has one of the most well-rounded, smart, capable, kind-hearted female leading characters in Broadway history. A very advanced portrayal of a woman for the times. And a complete anti-hero, just steps away from a villain, as it's charming lead. Maybe West Side should have won the Tony, but one can't argue the 57/58 season heavily influenced the trajectory of the modern American musical.

Did the new revival add anything to it?

Yes, by focusing the story on the community -- how it changed with the arrival of a very charismatic man whose actions and words helped change that community... as well as how that community changed the man.

The revival refocused the emphasis on the lessons of humanity, not simply on the artistic means to do it ( song & dance) even if those elements drew attention to the talent of this extraordinary stranger and how he won a woman made of sterner stuff - if you see the melting of the woman's feelings, isn't that the natural progression of their original relationship?

Unfortunately, the staid portrayal of Marian by such musically-gifted actresses like Cook &Jones et al only served to emphasize that this woman is simply one of the good citizens of this town, not an individualistic personality.

If only critics were not too lazy to look deeper into the creative and artistic vision of this revival... and the thinking of Meredith Willson when he lovingly portrayed the people, not just one man and one woman, in his beloved city!

Jo

[jo]

WIDE ANGLE
Hugh Jackman’s The Music Man Removes the Classic Show’s Racist Subtext. What’s Left?

Harold Hill was a Trumpian figure—but not anymore.

BY SAM ADAMS
FEB 23, 202211:38 AM
Hugh Jackman in a straw hat and suspenders, dancing with a group of children.
Hugh Jackman in The Music Man. Julia Cervantes



Harold Hill, the smooth-talking, straw boater-wearing salesman currently incarnated by Hugh Jackman in Broadway’s luxe revival of The Music Man, steps off the train in rural Iowa with a suitcase full of marching-band instruments that no one wants to buy. Fortunately, at least for him, instruments aren’t really what he’s selling. The residents of small-town River City don’t have any use for trombones and clarinets, let alone the pricey uniforms required to transform a cacophonous passel of novice horn players into an actual band. But Harold isn’t preoccupied with serving people’s actual needs so much as discerning what they want, then figuring out how to make that desire so acute that it blots out everything else.


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Harold Hill may not, as the traveling salesmen grumble in The Music Man’s opening number, “know the territory,” but he does know these people. (So did Meredith Willson, who wrote The Music Man based on his experiences growing up in Mason City, Iowa, in the early 20th century.) And it only takes one question—“What’s new around here?”—for him to figure out how to get these skeptical Midwesterners eating out of his hand. In his character-defining song “Ya Got Trouble,” Harold builds the novelty of the town’s recently acquired pool table into an existential threat to River City’s very way of life. Most of the upheavals with which he attempts to scare his future marks are comically picayune: the demise of horse-and-cart racing or the incursion of off-color slang, like the dreaded word “swell.” But in order to close the deal, he plays to an uglier, more deep-seated fear, one that makes a story set over a century ago feel suddenly up-to-the-minute. As his sales pitch takes on the fervor of a revival meeting, Harold paints a dire picture for the local parents: Pool halls, he warns, lead to drinking, gambling, smoking, and, eventually, to “your son, your daughter” being grabbed by “the arms of a jungle animal instinct,” all fueled by the “shameless” rhythms of ragtime music.



While “woke Shipoopi” has come in for a good ribbing, the changes to “Ya Got Trouble” have received scant notice, despite the fact that they fundamentally change what The Music Man is about.
Audiences seeing The Music Man on Broadway in 1957, at the height of the moral panic over white children’s exposure to the corrupting force of Black rock ’n’ roll, wouldn’t have needed the subtext of Harold Hill’s homily spelled out for them. But in the new production, the offending phrases have simply been wiped away, part of a wave of changes aimed at adapting the 65-year-old show for contemporary viewers, some of whom have paid upward of $700 for their seats at the Winter Garden Theatre. The new version, directed by Broadway veteran Jerry Zaks, mercifully cuts the pageant in which the town’s residents dress up as racist caricatures of Native Americans, and thanks to new lyrics by Hairspray’s Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the rousing singalong “Shipoopi” has been transformed from a jaunty endorsement of nonconsensual groping to an anthem in praise of men “who’ll wait till a girl says when.” But while “woke Shipoopi” has come in for a good ribbing, the changes to “Ya Got Trouble” have received scant notice, despite the fact that they fundamentally change what The Music Man is about. Instead of warning against “shameless” ragtime, Hugh Jackman’s Harold Hill cautions his crowd about “modern music;” “jungle animal instinct” has been swapped for “the depths of a syncopated frenzy.” Cutting the race-baiting from Harold’s signature song feels like an easy enough fix, but combined with the excision of a line branding the rambunctious teen Tommy Djilas—whose Serbian surname would have marked him as an ethnic other in 1912—for being the son of “one a’them day laborers south a’town,” the elision leaves a vacuum at the show’s center. Are the people of River City, a diverse bunch in this colorblind production, really that worked up about the encroachment of modernity? If Harold Hill isn’t selling lightly coded racial anxiety, what exactly is he selling?



When The Music Man was announced last year, some critics took issue with the revival, in part because Harold’s populist rhetoric sounded a little too close to Donald Trump’s. Even Robert Preston’s unmatchable performance, captured in the 1962 movie, plays a little differently now, his bottomless self-confidence and adopted workingman’s air taking on a vaguely sinister cast. But the changed context hasn’t added darkness to the role so much as it’s underlined what was already there. The scrubbed-down “Ya Got Trouble” still keeps Harold’s exhortation to “Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock, and the golden rule”—a cozy appeal to nostalgia that folds in the slogan used to gin up the dubious claims that ushered the U.S. into the Spanish–American War.

Jackman, a lifelong song-and-dance man who recently took on the role of iconic American huckster P.T. Barnum, seemed like an ideal fit for Harold Hill, but most reviews have noted that there’s something a little off in his portrayal. The New York Times’ Jesse Green called Jackman’s turn “smart but strangely inward,” and Time Out’s Adam Feldman said he’s “too likeable to take seriously and too patently slick to be believed.” If there’s a quality missing from Jackman’s portrayal, it’s, in a word, Trumpiness. Jackman’s Harold is more a wooer than a rabble-rouser, dazzling the town’s skeptical librarian (Sutton Foster) and leading its children in a series of invigorating dance numbers that have been extended to let him and the show’s massive ensemble shine. But he never summons the revival-meeting fervor that “Ya Got Trouble” demands, and when he starts the anthemic “76 Trombones,” which is meant to hook River City on the solution that only he can provide, the lighting drops to a single spotlight. It’s as if he’s sharing a personal vision rather than delivering a calculated spiel to gullible rubes. When he’s finally caught out for misleading the townspeople about his ability to form their youths into an airtight musical ensemble, Jackman replies, dreamily, “I always think there’s a band.”



Americans love fictional con artists, because they take the ideal of the self-made man to its ultimate end—a person whose only product is their actual self—and split the world into two groups: those savvy enough to be wise to the con (i.e. us, just by virtue of being in the audience) and those dumb yahoos over there. As Edward Ballesein puts it in Fraud, his history of American flim-flammery: “American popular culture … has retained a soft spot for charismatic grifters and oily-tongued salesmen, evincing admiration for their audacity, ingenuity, and capacity to land on their feet. Social commentators have often paired this appreciation with disapproval of the suckers who proved incapable of resisting pitches that proved too good to be true.”

We flatter ourselves, though, when we divide the world into operators and marks, especially when we invariably identify with the former. In her book The Confidence Game, Maria Konnikova explains that intelligent people are actually more susceptible to some cons, because they’re so unaccustomed to doubting themselves. (Con artists themselves also make great marks.) Preston’s charismatic bellow seems impossible to resist, but that belies the fact that the most successful cons are the ones we’re convinced to pull on ourselves. “The true con artist doesn’t force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing,” Konnikova writes. “We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us.” Harold Hill can’t sell what the people of River City aren’t already buying.



Declining to embody the uglier, Trumpier parts of Harold Hill doesn’t feel like a failure of Jackson’s performance so much as a refusal to dig in deeper, but the result is the same—a pallid, deracinated incarnation of a core American archetype. For a more truthful rendition on the American huckster, you have to head a few blocks southwest of the Winter Garden, where the New Group’s musical Black No More is playing at Signature Theater through Feb. 27. Inspired by George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel, the musical was co-written by and stars the Roots’ Tariq Trotter as a Satanic tempter named Julius Crookman, the inventor of a machine that can turn Black people’s skin white. Like Harold Hill, Julius’ real selling point is the end of difference, but instead of riling up the townspeople against outsiders, he’s pitching the residents of 1920s Harlem a way to make everyone look the same. “I offer you a crowbar to free you from your racist box,” he tells Max Disher (Brandon Victor Dixon), a hustler who crows that he “can run the pool tables like I run the streets,” but still feels like “three-fifths of a man.” What’s striking about Julius Crookman’s pitch is how little hustle there is in it. He may spell out “vitiligo” the way Harold Hill does “trouble,” but he doesn’t need to put the fear into his potential customers—white supremacy has done that for him.



An ingrained contrarian who, as the historian John Henrik Clarke put it, “got up in the morning, waited to see which way the world was turning, then struck out in the opposite direction,” Schuyler used his novel to savage thinly veiled versions of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, and Madame C.J. Walker, all of whom are essentially running cons of their own. And while the musical is not so roundly cynical, it follows the novel’s arc, with a transformed Max dubbing himself Matthew Fisher and traveling south, eventually becoming the de facto leader of a Klan knockoff called the Knights of Nordica. (Ironically, Schuyler himself followed a similar arc, eventually becoming a member of the far-right John Birch Society and critic of the civil rights movement.) Max doesn’t seek out his fate, but he also doesn’t do much to avoid it. Meanwhile, Harlem virtually empties out as its residents rush to follow Max’s lead. Eventually, the Knights of Nordica come to their new leader with a problem: There aren’t enough Black people left to sustain a violent nationalist movement built around repressing them. Who do we hate next?


“Cons,” Konnikova writes in The Confidence Game, “thrive in times of transition and fast change, when new things are happening and old ways of looking at the world no longer suffice.” That goes for our own era as well as Julius Crookman’s and, yes, Harold Hill’s. In a moment of instability, Harold offers the people of River City a way to turn back the clock, and though he can’t deliver on his promise to teach their children how to play their shiny new instruments, he’s got something that turns out to be just as good. Like a turn-of-the century version of the law of attraction, his patented “think system” advises the children not to touch their instruments at all, and to simply imagine themselves playing instead. And the thing is … it works. They’re not magically transformed into virtuosos, but they’ve obtained what Harold was really selling: a sense of their own community—not just uniforms, but uniformity. The kids still can’t play a note, but it doesn’t matter, because they believe they might be able to someday. And at the Winter Garden Theatre, the audience bursts into applause, delighted that the fantasy has once again been proven real. Americans love nothing more than envisioning what we can be, especially if it allows us to avoid seeing what we are.

[jo]

[jo]

BROADWAY/🤩 - EXPERIENCE NOW
THE MUSIC MAN 🤩
A Broadway review by a former theatre teacher.


by Esta Rosevear
March 14, 2022

THE MUSIC MAN is now on my all-time favorites list for amazing Broadway shows. It was everything you hoped it would be and more. It filled your heart with joy, laughter, and love.


I was thrilled to see THE MUSIC MAN with my son, Aaron, especially in New York.

Hugh Jackman starred as Professor Harold Hill, a traveling salesman with a scandalous reputation. Hugh was made for this role. He was born to be this character. ln his high school days, he even played one of the other traveling salesmen parts. He says he always remembered the words to the big musical numbers in hopes of one day playing the lead on Broadway. That day came just before the pandemic hit, and all of Broadway shut down. Hugh has been training for over a year, singing and tapping for Broadway’s reopening. He did not disappoint. His facial expressions, body language, pacing, singing, and dancing was perfection. The man can even twirl his hat on and off his head about a zillion times throughout each act and never let it hit the floor. It feels so personal watching him on stage. When he looks at someone else saying their lines, he is so “in the moment.” I believed he was genuinely listening and reacting as all great actors do. He will surely take home the Tony this year for all of his hard work and it is well-deserved.

Sutton Foster portrayed THE MUSIC MAN’S leading lady role. She is a two-time Tony award-winning actress who was fabulous, subtle, strong and has a smile that could light up 48th street for sure. Sutton is an expert dancer and singer. When she moves, all eyes are on her. She has grace, style, and complements Hugh. They have chemistry with a capital “C” and “that rhymes with “T” and stands for trouble” (Hah…I couldn’t resist. The songs are still racing around in my head). She brought to life Marian’s shy, librarian insecurities. Sutton colored her intentions, which in turn updated the script without changing a word. It was explosive and authentic. It was like attending a master acting class without even being aware.

The sets were creative and clever, especially the “Wells Fargo Wagon coming down the hill.” The use of crossovers (scenes acted in front of the curtain) was well-done and allowed the larger sets to be moved wherever necessary. The choreography was sublime and sheer precision. The ensemble’s timing and quick movements were impeccable. This cast highlighted six children, and they could do anything the “older” dancers could and more. Highlights were of course, “76 TROMBONES, MARIAN THE LIBRARIAN, OH, WE GOT TROUBLE, SHIPOOPIE, and ROCK ISLAND” The costumes were authentic and moved with ease and grace. They brought you into the scene but did not overpower the characters. The lighting was warm and hot. It was lit so well that the audience could view even the tiniest of details down to Hugh’s raised eyebrows, or Sutton’s blushing cheeks.

THE MUSIC MAN was exactly what I dreamed it would be. I directed this great show years ago. I knew every song and line. I saw it on March 10th, transfixed and in awe of what was unfolding before my eyes. I will remember the moments forever. I would recommend everyone to see this spectacular musical especially with the original stage cast. Once in a blue moon, a show comes along and knocks you on your butt. This was THE MUSIC MAN. It is as timely today as it was decades ago. It will make you smile, laugh, shed a tear, and whisk you away. In this crazy, upside-down world, we all need that right now. It is hopeful and priceless. My heart is full.

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

Not just a fan --

look at what THReporter film critic ( formerly theatre critic... and also critic for other publications) and big Hugh Jackman fan David Rooney did tweet --

Wasn't it to Rooney that Rudin gave the exclusive news on Hugh doing TMM (March 2019)?

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/hugh-jackman-lead-broadway-revival-music-man-1194075/



Jo

[jo]

I followed his conversation with Tyler Coates ( Awards Editor for THR ) --

Tyler Coates
@tylercoates
·
21m
I am actually desperate to fly to NYC to see this!!!

****************************

David Rooney
@davidcrooney1
·
18m
I was prepared for it to be very creaky and old-fashioned, which it is, but we had a great time. Terrific to see a show with so much exuberant dancing. And a really deluxe supporting cast of pros

******************************

Tyler Coates
@tylercoates
·
17m
it's one of the first musicals I fell in love with (thanks to my local theatre troupe putting it on), so it still holds a place in my heart -- and it would be a true thrill to see it blown out with a huge Broadway production

******************************

David Rooney
@davidcrooney1
Replying to
@tylercoates
and
@broadwaycares
I doubt it will ever be done in a production of this scale again, so get on a plane!!

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

Liked
by David Rooney

See new Tweets
Liked
JoAB
@joab46466753
·
16m
Replying to
@davidcrooney1

@tylercoates
and
@broadwaycares
Thanks! It will also give me a chance to connect not just w/ the joy that B'way (esp this revival) gives its audiences but it is also a time to reconnect w/ kin & friends in NYC.
Plus, can't miss a chance to see HJ in 2 potential big hits in his career - MusicMan & TheSon

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

David Rooney
liked 4 of your Tweets

And no show was beset with such obstacles as what happened to the Music Man project -- the pandemic and the Rudin debacle! Key was Jackman keeping the faith! And Diller holding the fort! The kids were afraid they would outgrow max height standards (they had to re-audition).
👍💐

[jo]

David Rooney
liked 5 of your Tweets

Interview with Warren Carlyle - how the pandemic gave him time to create the impressive choreography & how Hugh went with him along the way.
theatermania.com/broadway/news/interview-warren-carlyle-finds-harmony-in-being-ba_93584.html