Geva Theater Center obviously has a hit in its new and reconceived production of The Music Man, Meredith Willson's enduringly beloved American musical, which is actually neither the easy crowd-pleaser nor surefire success that it is generally considered to be. I've seen elaborate-looking outdoor versions that didn't work well, and the expensive TV version with the almost-always winning Matthew Broderick didn't work at all. Fortunately, Geva's artistic director and his large, lively cast appreciate the show's strengths enough to leave audiences applauding, smiling, and teary-eyed.
The show, about a charming con-man who talks small-town rubes into buying expensive instruments and uniforms and then ducks out without ever training or setting up a marching band, essentially sells us on the value of putting music in our lives. Meredith Willson, who grew up in early 20th-century, rural midwestern America said that he intended to create a "valentine" to a simpler time and the joys of a marching band.
In his rave review of the original Broadway premiere, Brooks Atkinson noted that since it contains so many "low-comedy flourishes," The Music Man is more "a cartoon and not a valentine." But it's a loving cartoon. A piccolo-player in the original John Philip Sousa Band and later First Flute of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Toscanini, as well as composer/creator of famed film scores and Broadway musicals and trend-setting TV shows, Meredith Willson was hardly the man to make fun of any kind of musical training.
But Willson had a great sense of humor and could certainly write. His first autobiography was titled, "And There I Stood with My Piccolo," which is the punchline of a joke about a potentate who rewarded some musicians by taking them to his treasury and telling them to fill their instruments with gold and jewels. The star of this production, Broadway veteran John Bolton, remarked that Willson's script is so well-written that it is easy to remember and appreciate the lines. We can believe his Harold Hill comes to realize he's sold himself on his story of hearing the all-star band concert he sings about in the show's anthem, "Seventy-Six Trombones."
Director Mark Cuddy got permission to change the time-period from 1912 to 1954, arguing that we are too removed to feel nostalgia for the turn of the 20th century as a simpler time. Ignoring the many who would have returned to small-town Iowa from two world wars by 1954, I can accept that alteration. And Cuddy has added a unique touch very much in tune with Willson. He arranged for as many local marching bands as possible to take turns appearing at the end of the show to illustrate just what this show is about. They march down the aisles to the orchestra pit after the final bows and do not actually interact with the cast, but they march up onto the stage and exit upstage as the cast applauds them. Opening night featured the very young-looking school band from Brockport, NY in their handsome blue uniforms. The amusing and likable performances all work well. My only problem with this production is its looks. The largest cast and overall undertaking of Geva to date, it still looks very empty at times. Marian the Librarian's house shows only as a tiny platform on stage right, and her library has no ladders to reach the upper shelves. The footbridge stands alone on a large open stage floor with only a blue curtain many feet behind it and not a path or plant or flower or suggestion of water or a tree near it. And I do not share director Cuddy's feeling that the "palette" of the townsfolk's garb is beautiful. Admittedly, I grew up in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. in the early '50s and never saw anything like women's chintzy dresses in floral patterns I wouldn't put on a porch swing's seat, plus square knee-length pants showing under the dresses all in color schemes like pink with lime green and off-white, or olive with orange and yellow. But these were on the Mayor's wife and daughter and leading families, and I wonder whether rural Iowa saw anything like them either. And didn't gag.
The band has only nine musicians, but, except for the overture, sounds okay. Peggy Hickey's choreography is nicely adapted to the varying abilities of the actors and dancers and looks smart, if hardly as brilliant as her complete reworking of Urinetown at Geva, which was full of delicious parodies of dance in other musicals. I would have liked to see something more specifically representative of the peculiar dance called "Shipoopi," rather than what looked like standard dance-class choreography.
Skip Greer's Mayor Shinn commands the stage but is played more naturalistically than the usual broadly comic approach, and Jennifer Smith amuses but is also somewhat restrained as his wife. The women's ridiculous "Grecian" tableaux led by Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn seems cut down and deemphasized: they usually get big laughs. But, again, Cuddy's direction sensibly plays down any hints of satire.
Cass Morgan's strong Mrs. Paroo, our heroine's mother, makes a dynamic, favorable impression any time she is allowed to. And the River City School Board Trevor Strader, Sean Jarnigan, Stephen Wilde and Jon Clunies -- delight the audience whenever they are spotlighted [literally]. Those are the four men whom Harold Hill simply reminds of songs and barbershop quartets, and, without instruction, they go into four-part harmony at the slightest hint.
Particularly with the usual silly comedy played down, the show had to be carried by its romantic leads, and they do not disappoint. Analisa Leaming is a charming and affecting Marian. Her initial high notes could cut glass, but she rounds out the later ones and uses her big, pretty soprano very well. That bright, snippy librarian can be a stereotype, and her romantic involvement with a man she knows from the start to be without any musical background is hard to differentiate from moonstruck. But Leaming manages to be persuasive in her appreciation of Harold's honest infatuation with his own pretense, and of his basic kindness. John Bolton hasn't got a big, concert-quality baritone, but he can put over most singing short of operatic, and he's a very skilled actor/dancer./singer; so there is no appropriate response to his Harold Hill except grinning applause. 
