Who doesn’t want a big old slap of Americana? What an odd-man-out show this was when Meredith Willson’s The Music Man opened on Broadway in 1957.
It begins with the usual old-fashioned brassy overture of musical snippets of songs to come, but the curtain rises with the non-musical number “Rock Island,” perhaps the first appearance of “rap” in all Broadway history. To the clacking rhythm of a train, the traveling salesmen bemoan the use of credit instead of cash, the cellophane packaging of Uneeda Bisquits driving out the ubiquitous cracker barrel, the annoyance of the Model T that made the people “wanna go, wanna get, wanna get, wanna get up and go,” the demise of the “little bitty two-by-four kinda store.” It’s brilliant and still eye-and-ear opening. Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton owes quite a debt to Meredith Willson’s stunning opener.
It took Willson decades to get his first musical produced. Already established as a concert flutist and piccolo player for John Philip Sousa’s Band and then in the New York Philharmonic under the legendary Arturo Toscanini; later he would compose the scores for Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and William Wyler’s The Little Foxes for Goldwyn. He was renowned as a radio personality with Tullulah Bankhead and Burns & Allen, but was a complete newbie for Broadway.
It was this innocence that made The Music Man so inventive, fresh, and unique, still to this day. He pairs a child’s piano lesson, with its cross-hands, while our heroine sings of a love yet-to-be, “Goodnight My Someone,” which, with a bump to up-tempo, morphs into the rousing “Seventy Six Trombones.” There are turn-of-the-century barber shop quartet numbers, rollicking dances like the rag-inspired “Shippopi,” syncopated sinuous songs like “Marian the Librarian,” and Hill’s gospel choir patter song “Trouble,” “You got trouble, folks, right here in River City, trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.” And let’s not forget “Pick a Little, Talk a Little” paired with “Good Night Ladies.” The music is clever, new and different, even though set in 1912 Iowa.
This touring production owes a bit from the recent Broadway revival starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster (the costumes by veteran pro Santo Loquasto, are the same), but the whole thing seems more alive and bouncy. Joshua Bergasse’s choreography is bright and difficult, highlighting the gypsies’ exceptional gymnastic and balletic talents. The new sets and projections, all wonderful and candy-coated, are executed by Ann Beyersdorfer and Lisa Renkel, under Ken Billington’s expert lighting. The footbridge scene looks like “On Moonlight Bay” and Monet’s garden at Giverny. Lovely.(However, the follow-spot operator needs a few more rehearsals to find the principals.)
No one, not even a song-and-dance man like Jackman, can replace the show’s Tony-winning originator Robert Preston, but Elliott Andrews is smooth and nimble like a younger Dick Van Dyke. He’s not the most velvety singer, but neither was Preston, but he can move, jumping down staircases, turning on a dime, or swirling across the floor. He’s a younger, lither Harold Hill, which is a good thing for romancing Marian the librarian. Elizabeth D’Aiuto as virginal Marian seems much too old for Andrews, and she sings full-out like she’s auditioning for Tosca. It’s too much and over-miked. Turn her down.
This production glows with nostalgia swirling around ice cream socials, patriotic pageants, and a lovable con man redeemed by the rubes he wants to con, fashioned with old-fashioned Broadway know-how, and those Willson ballads and marches that we all know by heart. Directed by Matt Lenz as if on casters, this touring production of The Music Man smacks us back to those days of Broadway’s legendary past. We sorely miss them.
The Music Man continues through September 27 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-668-8887 or visit tuts.org. $42-$178.
