Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster star in "The Music Man" on Broadway, which opened Feb. 10.
Joan Marcus
The meteoric hype surrounding “The Music Man,” which opened Thursday night time on Broadway, has been constructing now for — one way or the other — three years.
The musical boasts the identical inventive group as Bette Midler’s wildly profitable “Good day, Dolly!,” and all of us hoped it might be the bandleader of Broadway’s post-pandemic return. Including extra sparkle, Hugh Jackman performs the main man, Harold Hill, and on paper, it’s the function of the celebrated actor’s lifetime.
THE MUSIC MAN
Operating time: 2 and a half hours with one intermission. On the Winter Backyard Theatre, 1634 Broadway.
“The Music Man,” I’m sorry to say, doesn't dwell as much as our oversize expectations. Fairly unexpectedly, you allow not raving about Jackman, one in every of Broadway’s hottest sellers, however the music girl — Sutton Foster, who performs Marian “The Librarian” Paroo. She’s a surprise and the principle purpose to purchase a ticket.
A lot has been manufactured from Foster not having the hovering soprano vary of Barbara Prepare dinner and Shirley Jones, however that doesn’t matter. Hers is as considerate, humorous, threatening, witty, maternal and romantic a Marian as you’ve ever seen. She by no means settles for a schoolmarm stereotype and makes 65-year-old traces recent.
When the actress sublimely sings Meredith Willson’s “Until There Was You,” it’s a victory — for her, for Marian, for us and for a manufacturing of an American basic that, up till then, struggles to seek out an assured id.
Generally the present is darkish and moody, decided to not have an excessive amount of enjoyable with a narrative a couple of con artist who wins in the long run regardless of his misdeeds. At others, it’s the “Music Man” of our cringeworthy highschool recollections — painfully corny when it needn't be. The pleasant opening night time crowd was unsure when to snigger on the jokes, and that’s a serious drawback for a musical comedy.
Jackman performs Harold Hill, a touring salesman who arrives on the prepare in repressed River Metropolis, Iowa, with the purpose of swindling the city by forming a children’ marching band. He’ll overcharge gullible mother and father for the devices and uniforms, train bogus classes after which hightail it to the subsequent metropolis as quickly as of us catch on. Then, whoopsie, he falls in love with hardened Marian.
The function was famously performed on Broadway and on display screen by Robert Preston, the reminiscence of whom Jackman spends most of his time operating away from. When he speak-sings “Hassle” — one of the vital rousing tunes in the whole musical theater canon — he alters it up all over the place he can, even when meaning sacrificing punch and momentum. “Ya Received Hassle” and, say it ain’t so, “Seventy-Six Trombones” are jarringly ho-hum right here. The entire first act meanders to a fizzle.
What Hill is supposed to attain in these huge numbers is convincing a bunch of cussed Midwesterners, together with his radiant attraction and charisma, to belief and embrace a smooth-talking charlatan. However Jackman’s interpretation is so bizarrely dour — as if he’s judging his personal character’s sins for us — that their infatuation is not sensible.
He and Foster dance Warren Carlyle’s choreography higher than any earlier pair of actors may’ve. The motion is straightforward on the eyes (even when Santo Loquasto’s flat, lusterless set isn't) however gentle on storytelling. When Hill arrives, his rebel vitality sparks a hearth in River Metropolis’s youth and also you’d hope to really feel their riot within the dancing. A number of it, although, is cute and wiggly.
Jackman and Foster are joined within the musical, directed by Jerry Zaks, by a helluva stacked solid. Tony Award winners (comparable to Jefferson Mays as Mayor Shinn, Jayne Houdyshell as his inflexible spouse and Shuler Hensley as Marcellus) utter only a few traces. We go away wanting extra from them as a result of we’ve seen how nice they are often — like if Laurence Olivier had a brief walk-on function in “Younger Sheldon.”
Within the lead-up to “Music Man,” many pals admitted to me that they only plain don’t just like the present. I’d reply that they haven’t but seen a manufacturing that lives as much as the wondrous materials. The staging at Canada’s Stratford Pageant in 2018, as an illustration, that many New Yorkers noticed was an unforgettable triumph.
It’s been 20 years since “The Music Man” final performed Broadway. Possibly 20 years from now, an invigorated Harold Hill will hop off the prepare at Grand Central and present ‘em the way it’s carried out.
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