| THE MUSIC MAN Last Night | |
| Last Edit: sergius 11:42 pm EST 02/09/22 | |
| Posted by: sergius 11:28 pm EST 02/09/22 | |
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| It’s 1958 in the Winter Garden Theatre. THE MUSIC MAN is a revival in the truest sense: it brings back time. What you think it is is what it was. Like a lot of shows from this period, THE MUSIC MAN is sentimental about the prospect of America, a time when hope, like a prairie, went on and on. It chides selfishness and exalts communal values. It believes our ills can be cured by goodwill. And honesty. And love. Today, these ideals can only be quaint. More than a slight on THE MUSIC MAN, this is, sadly, a slight on America. I have no substantive familiarity with the show, but what interested me most here was how Willson elides song and speech, how they move effortlessly back and forth. In particular, "Rock Island", a sort of gloss on a patter song but with rhythm and tempo foregrounded, is really startling, in itself and as a kind of precursor to contemporary rap forms. Beyond this interesting surprise—to me at least—the other pleasure here is watching Jackman and Foster be charming. Neither is ideally cast—he is not nearly convincing as a con man and she can only appropriate peevishness—but they bend the show to their willful talents. There’s something comforting about this kind of professionalism. These two are working for you; they want to give you what you want from them. And they do. They, and all here, are on the same yellowed page. THE MUSIC MAN is, once again, the best musical of 1958. | |
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