9/7/2024 THE MUSIC MAN City Springs Theatre Company
YA GOT TROUBLE!
Let’s be honest here. 1957’s The Music Man (book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson) is a product of its time. It is essentially a “feel good” musical about a heartless con man who stalks the town librarian in an effort to bilk the “rubes” out of big bucks. The story stops cold to drop in under-motivated BIG production numbers (I’m looking at YOU, “Shipoopi”) that add little or nothing to the story. It has a big-city disdain for small-town life and a chauvinistic, even misogynistic attitude towards women.
And yet, it managed to trounce the far superior West Side Story at the 1958 Tony’s and is constantly revived, revised, revisited, and remounted. I have seen several productions, some of which I hated, some of which I loved. It all depends on … Well, I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
City Springs Theatre’s production falls under the “Loved” banner. Everything about this show seemed to have been designed to steal our hearts and senses and to convince us to accept Harold Hill as a charming scamp rather than as a #MeToo cancellation candidate. The cast and design team pulled out the stops and the entire thing was as pleasant as a parade on a cool autumn day.
Harold Hill is a con man who sells unsuspecting small town folk band instruments and band uniforms then skips town with the money before they realize he knows nothing about music and has no intentions of forming a “Boy’s Band.” (Why no girls? Well it’s 1912 and girls are only going to grow up to be (shudder) women, so why waste the energy? To its credit, this production does include female band members and even refers to them as such.)
Anyway, “Professor” Hill has come to River City Iowa, just across the river (presumably the Mississippi) from Illinois and about a thousand miles (and a hundred years) from any big city foolishness. There, in short order, he puts himself (and his “band”) forward as the only thing that can save the townsfolk from the “Trouble” of a new pool table in the Billiards Hall. Faster than you can say “P.T. Barnum,” the quarreling school board are singing in perfect Barbershop Quartet harmony, the “bad kid” Tommy Djilas is showing a penchant for engineering by (almost) inventing a lyre for a piccolo player, the gossipy wives are dancing and embracing Delsarte theatrics, and the “sadder but wiser” librarian is falling under Harold’s spell.
Now, if he can elude the mayor and the school board long enough to collect the cash and skedaddle, he just may get out of town untarred, unfeathered, and a little sadder-but-wiser himself.
One of the chief pleasures of this piece is the very familiar score by Meredith Willson. As a high school trombonist myself, I always feel a little giddy when I hear “76 Trombones,” (*) and the many patter songs that characterize Hill’s “fast-talking” spiel are all a joy to hear. Starting out with the rhythmic (and a capella) “Rock Island,” this is a score that relies on the music of words themselves, the rhythms of daily life, the lyricism of emotion in flight, and the sheer joy of friends and colleagues together on a hot summer night.
For those with a taste of irony, there are also some historical anachronisms that echo Hill’s choosing a “Gary Conservatory Gold Medal Class” of year before Gary IN even existed. For the record, and if you didn’t know (and you probably didn’t), Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang (mentioned in “Trouble”) wasn’t published until 1919, near-beer “Bevo” (also in “trouble”) wasn’t available until 1916, and the “great Irish Trumpeter” “O’Mendez” was only six years old in 1912. I like to think that these “slips” are intentional, Willson’s sly effort to flim-flam all of us.
And, let’s be honest here – Is Hill really conning these people? After all, they’re paying for instruments
and uniforms, and he delivers both. He even includes instructional books. There is nothing to stop the River Citiziens from forming that band themselves. They even have a music teacher in the library. In the history of the “Long Con,” this has got to be one of the tamest. Ah, but Iowans are stubborn (as we are constantly told), so, if “Professor” Hill promised lessons, promised leadership, he sure as heck better deliver!
Now that I’ve had a few paragraphs to think about it, I may be able to cite two factors that sometimes lead me to yawn through a production of The Music Man – the overall energy of the show, and the ability of the actor playing Hill to charm and woo me, even as he charms and woos the River Citiziens. One production in particular had a Harold Hill that sang well and didn’t stumble on the patter, but rarely smiled and created a character who was just too blecccch to care about. That same production seemed to have been directed by someone who saw it as just a by-the-numbers job and (allegedly) hated the show itself (“Well, the Board selected it, so I suppose I have to direct it”). I should have left at intermission.
Here though, the cast and orchestra explode with energy, and Billy Tighe’s Harold Hill has charm oozing out the spit valve. He could have sold snowballs to eskimos or Bibles to me. Director Shuler Hensley (who incidentally played Marcellus in the 2022 Jackman/Foster revival) keeps the pace speed-rail fast, and the long running time passes in an eye-blink.
It doesn’t hurt that costume coordinator Amanda Edgerton West and Wig Designer Alycia Berry keep the cast looking period-correct and character-specific. Set Designer Jacob Olson has given us a breathtakingly grand set with a so many moving parts the shift crew had as much choreography to learn as the cast (my favorites being a long bridge so high (but accessible) it must have given the cast nose bleeds to cross) and a library backdrop impossibly tall and wide – how volumes at the extreme top were accessed with 1912 technology is a mystery, but it certainly was a breathtaking sight for bibliophiles such as me. Mike Wood’s lighting was another asset, highlights hitting at the right time and place, time of day and location effective and specific, and split-second timing always on cue. MD/Conductor Miles Plant kept his 16-piece orchestra (TWO trombones? Be still my heart!) and 36-voice (counting principals) ensemble together, on key, and filling the universe with Willson’s always enjoyable score.
And this is a dream cast. In addition to Mr. Tighe, Scarlett Walker is a perfect Marion, strong of voice and spirit, always an asset to a scene. Pamela Gold’s Mrs. Paroo is pure delight, Irish to a fault, loving without conditions. Googie Uterhardt brings his usual comic inventiveness to Marcellus. Brian Kurlander and Courtenay Collins are Mayor and Eulalie Shinn and wonderful comedians (Kammie Crum is also delightful as daughter Zaneeta as is Trevor Groce as Zaneeta’s crush, Tommy Djillas). As the squabbling school board who form a perfect Barbershop Quartet, Claudio Pestana, Alec Beard, Nick Morrett, and Kyle Robert Carter keep harmony as if they’ve been singing together for decades, and as Mrs. Shinn’s “Pick-a-Little” ladies, Lyndsey Cole, Mila Bolash, Galen Crowley, and Candy McLellan Davison are a comic extravaganza.
As the kids, Jackson Arthur is a thweet and lithping Winthrop, and Gigi McClenning is a tunefully pleasant Amaryllis. A good chunk of the ensemble is also of an age with Mr. Arthur and Ms. McClenning, so this particular River City is well-populated with kids, teenagers, and adults, even adults “of a certain age.” When this cast is together for a big number, it is a boundless wallow in musical theatre rapture. Even “Shipoopi!”
So, I will maintain to my dying day that West Side Story is a far better musical than The Music Man. And it’s significant that neither the 2000 nor the 2022 revivals won any Tony’s despite being nominated for a parade-full. But it was the perfect musical for the time and City Springs Theatre’s production shows us why. If we can forget all our 2024-cultural-smugness about the attitudes and ethos of 1957 (and its own cultural smugness about 1912), there is something about the book and score and design and performance that transcends our own 2024 mindset, bringing us more pleasures than we’re likely to find in any show. What that something may be is a mystery, and I am content to let it remain so.
-- Brad Rudy (BK Rudy@aol.com #CitySpringsTheatreCo #The Music Man)
(*) A Highlight of my senior year in High School: Penn State had a yearly Band Day during which dozens and dozens of Pennsylvania High School Bands formed a giant PSU across the entire football field at halftime. In the fall of 1970, “76 Trombones” was (one of) the chosen features. So, of course every high school trombone player in Pennsylvania had to rush to the head of the bands (actually the visitor’s sidelines) and play. Believe me there were far more than 76 of us. I have a picture somewhere. I couldn’t tell you who the Nittany Lions were playing that day (or if they won; OTOH it was Penn State at Paterno's peak so I'd guess they won), but I will NEVER forget the sound of all those trombones playing in unison the opening measures. It was so loud, it didn’t matter if I were out of tune (I usually was) or if I got a few notes wrong (I usually did).