[ATTENDED: May 21, 2022] The Music Man
S. loves musicals. She especially loves The Music Man. So when it was revived for Broadway and was starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, I knew I had to get tickets for her.
And then the pandemic shut down Broadway. I believe the show was supposed to open in 2020 (I was going to get us tickets back in 2019). But then Broadway bounced back and the show opened in December 2021. We managed to get tickets for May 2022 (purchased on October 3, 2021). We were in Left Mezzanine Row D seats 49-51.
The seats were a little far to the left, but were not obstructed in any real way (there was one scene where we couldn’t quite see what was going on in the one corner, but that’s okay. most of the action was out front.
We opted for the matinee performance because, well, hell, it was much easier to get into the city early and to get home at a reasonable hour. Or so we thought. Our train in had delays. Our transfer train into Penn Station had an overflowing toilet! It was pretty stressful. It was also crazy hot. But we did enjoy our dirty water dogs on the street corner before heading into the theater.
We got to our seats and were pretty excited as the curtain was down and people put away their phones.
And then the curtain lifted and there were the salesmen on the train. And that familiar chatter “Whaddya talk whaddya talk” started up. And I didn’t realize that Hugh Jackman was one of the guys on the train. So when he stood up and made himself known there was rapturous applause.
I haven’t been to a ton of Broadway shows, but there was a buzz about this one that felt special.
I mean, you expect the costumes to be good, but they felt great. The cast was sizable and they all were great.
Plus, the music is really classic. Obviously if you know the musical, but even if you don’t, you’ve heard “76 Trombones,” (which is really something to hear a cast sing it), and of course “Ya Got Trouble” (that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool). Sidebar: This storyline is wonderfully devious. To turn pool against the town is pretty underhanded.
But back to “Trouble.” This is where Hugh Jackman comes in. Jackman loves Broadway. You can see it from the moment he looks at the audience and smiles. He is having the time of his life up there. He is enjoying the singing, the dancing, the manipulation. He is 100% in his element.
And so is Sutton Foster. I hadn’t mentioned her yet, but that’s not because of any shortcoming on her part. We knew her from her lead role in Bunheads. I didn’t know her before that, but she was terrific on that show. But she really gets to let loose live. And she and Jackman just seem to feed off of each other and make each other better.
I don’t know if this was because we were at a matinee (which I assume is less “serious” (based on literally nothing). But there was a moment where, they literally pushed each other and I think Jackman stumbled and laughed which made Foster laugh a little. It was a comic scene and made the whole scene all the funnier.
Foster is, of course, Marian the Librarian (hated character among all librarians), but she brings a modernity and a lot of depth to the character (the scene in the library where books are flung around the room is pretty great choreography). Foster sings “Goodnight, My Someone” and there’s not a dry eye in the house.
There’s a ton of humor in the story, none of it condescending to the locals. A song like “Pick a little, talk a little”: “Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more” sounds fantastic with a large group of women singing it. And the lovely entendre of “Dirty books?
Chaucer, Rabelais, Ballzac. The secondary characters steal scenes without upstaging the show. Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn, the sheriff’s stagestruck wife (played by Jayne Houdyshell) is outlandish and over the top, but, and here’s the best part–she is spot on and perfect in the part. Bringing an excellent amount of humor without bringing any eye rolling.
And, in what was surprising (although really shouldn’t have been, as it is a professional show) was how good the kids were. Both individually and in groups. The choreography was always spot on.
Before the show I was reading in the program that Santo Loquasto designed the sets and costumes. Loquasto worked on many many Woody Allen films and, say what you will about Allen, his films always looked amazing. The sets were lovely without being fussy. And the costumes were detailed perfection (they were really something to look at when people were monologuing) without being restricting (when people were dancing)
And the barbershop quartet was outstanding too.
It was a great day out. And thank goodness we saw the matinee as the train ride home took an inexplicably long time (we got to the station in time for the train that was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than the one we initially though we’d catch. But it wound up being 90 minutes late). But at least we had a song in our collective heart.
Oh and in case you were mistaken, like I was, Meredith Wilson is a male. Not that it matters, but it sort of changes how I imagined it being written.
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