“The Music Many” is Homemade Jelly,

Applie Pie and Sweet, Sweet Melodies

By Pat Lindsey

“The Music Man” chugged into our own River City Tuesday night with nary a trouble—that is until the townspeople got wise to Professor Harold Hill’s lies and deceit. He promised to create a marching band in three weeks by using the “Think System,” but no one who ordered a band uniform, instruction book, and instrument learned to play one note. The people of River City are so angry that a con artist has swindled them out of their money that they hunt down Professor Hill to tar and feather him, but Marian the librarian comes to his rescue and points out just how much value everyone has received from the man who has failed to produce his academic and musical credentials.

The year is 1912 and the sleepy town of River City, Iowa, population 2212, gets its news and supplies from salesmen traveling on trains and the Wells Fargo wagon. There’s a library in town, but it seems few people are broad-minded enough to read the books. No one seems to be aware of how dull and boring life is in River City until Professor Hill brings music to key people in town. He turns the arguing members of the school board into an inseparable harmonizing quartet and helps a speech-impaired little boy find self-confidence. He plants the seed for the mayor’s wife to organize a dance committee and empowers a teenager to become a band leader. Little by little, he injects vitality and purpose into the lives of the River City residents and teaches Marian the librarian how to love. And in doing all of this, Professor Hill admits that for the first time he “got his foot caught in the door.”

“The Music Man” has held a special place in my heart since I sang in the chorus of our Cleveland High School production many years ago. It has played at The Muny ten times and I think I’ve seen every one of them. Its Meredith Wilson score is filled with beautiful songs such as, “Till There Was You” and “Goodnight, My Someone,” and witty ditties , “Pick a Little, Talk a Little” and “Ya Got Trouble.” Of course, the big, rousing number is “Seventy-six Trombones” and it’s always a surprise to see how the director features that number in the finale.

The score is beautifully sung by Elena Shaddow (Marian Paroo), Hunter Foster (Harold Hill), Elizabeth McCarthy (Mrs. Paroo), the quartet, and chorus, and little Winthrop Paroo (Owen Hanford) adds his endearing lispy vocals to “Gary, Indiana” and “The Wells Fargo Wagon.” And River City’s Mayor Shinn (Mark Linn-Baker) is a master at “phraseology” rather than singing.

Just as music transforms the town of River City into a loving community, “The Music Man” will envelop The Muny audience and send its patrons home humming. “The Music Man” is playing at The Muny in Forest Park nightly at 8:15 p.m. July 5-11. For more information, call (314) 361-1900 or go to muny.org/tickets.

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