Meredith Willson’s The Music Man has been produced by every community theater in America, probably twice. That amounts to approximately 76 million trombones leading a very big parade.
OK, so everybody and their brother has seen it, with a piano (or perhaps a small amateur combo) as accompaniment. Or they know the movie version with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. Or they heard Paul McCartney singing “Till There Was You” on Meet the Beatles!
Maybe they’re familiar with the classic Simpsons parody, written by Conan O’Brien, with Phil Hartman providing the voice of the con man who sells a rickety monorail system to the gullible folks of Springfield.
St. Pete Opera is closing out its season with The Music Man. The company’s annual nod to standard musical theater — onstage through July 8 — is so accomplished, and so much fun, that the bar has been raised. It’s a gamble attempting to breathe new life into something so well-worn, but director/choreographer Deanna Dys, conductor Mark Sforzini and a talented company of artisans and performers has pulled it off and then some.
Story-wise, The Music Man is pure corn — a lying snake-oil salesman separates rural rubes from their money by promising to create an all-boys marching band they can be proud of — but the 61-year-old show’s legend was well-earned.
The music is glorious. And with this St. Pete Opera production, not only are the songs being performed by professional opera singers (even the ensemble is peppered with them), there’s a full orchestra giving three-dimensional life to Willson’s melodies.
Horns! Woodwinds! Strings! Percussion! This is how these songs were meant to be heard, with this kind of accompaniment. The music absolutely comes alive. You can put that old upright piano away now, Grandma.
Peter Kendall Clark is cast as Professor Harold Hill, the titular grifter, with Molly Mustonen as Marian Paroo, River City’s lovelorn librarian. And yes, of course, romance does ensue.
It takes place in 1912, in the sort of idealized American town Walt Disney based his “Main Street USA” design on. In fact, the events of the story include the townspeople proudly celebrating the Fourth of July, and putting on an ice cream social, complete with a pretentious dance featuring the mayor’s wife as “entertainment.”
While the leads are fine — and Mustonen’s rendition of “Goodnight, My Someone” is breathtaking — the MVP of this show is the ensemble. In particular, the big production numbers (“Seventy-Six Trombones,” “Wells Fargo Wagon,” “Shipoopi,” “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little”) are packed with moving parts, impeccably choreographed and danced with happy abandon. The performers look like they’re having a great time, and their joy is infectious.
It’s that kind of show.
Special mention must go to the incredible barbershop quartet — Matthew Krob, Adam Cannedy, George Slotin and Branch Fields, all of whom are opera and/or musical theater professionals who have presumably never sung barbershop before.
And to Warren Sodt’s Disney-esque set design. And to the colorful costumes created by Glenn A. Breed. And to the youngest cast member, 10-year-old Jackson Orchard of St. Petersburg, who belts out “Gary, Indiana” like he’s been onstage his entire life.
At just over two-and-a-half hours, the show is a tad long (that’s the way they wrote ‘em in the old days), and on opening night, some of the words were difficult to understand, particularly during the rapid-fire “patter” songs (this is apparently a recurring issue with St. Pete Opera shows at the Palladium).
Minor quibbles. Musical theater fans, consider yourself advised: Don’t miss this St. Pete Opera production.
That’s Production with a capital “P”
And that rhymes with “G”
And that stands for “Great.”
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 5, 2018.
