‘The Music Man’ hopes to lead Broadway out of winter woes
By MARK KENNEDY
NEW YORK (AP) — One of the first songs in “The Music Man” is ”(Ya Got) Trouble” and the latest Broadway revival has certainly faced its share.
It was supposed to open in fall 2020, but rehearsals were interrupted by the pandemic shutdown. In 2021, it jettisoned its lead producer, Scott Rudin, after allegations of bullying. When the show restarted, both lead actors — Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster — contracted COVID-19. And when the understudies couldn’t keep it going, it temporarily shut down.
Now its producers see light at the end of the tunnel — for the show and Broadway. “The Music Man” opens Thursday as the marquee event of this theater season, commanding hundreds of dollars per ticket and signaling a new dawn for a beleaguered theater industry.
“Everything has been thrown at us and we survive,” says Barry Diller, who is producing alongside David Geffen and Kate Horton. “But I won’t say we’ve survived until we open. I woke up this morning thinking locusts might come.”
The musical tells the simple story about Harold Hill, a traveling con man who in 1912 convinces a small Iowa town into forming a band and selling them instruments until love changes him. It’s got classic songs like ″Seventy-Six Trombones,” ″Goodnight My Someone,” ″Gary, Indiana” and “Till There Was You.”
“It feels to me like ‘The Music Man’ is sort of the antidote to the stress and the uncertainty and the fear that everybody has been feeling because it’s such a story of hope and community, love and belief fulfilled,” says Horton, who previously held executive roles at the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Court in England.
The starry revival of the classic musical comedy, which won the Tony Award for best new musical in 1958, includes six Tony winners and 21 cast members making their Broadway debuts.
