Hill manages to divert some suspicious town fathers by coaxing them into becoming a barbershop quartet, at which point the bliss of straight-tone mixing overwhelms all their good midwestern sense. I had a town music teacher for that.īut anyway, Hill’s a rapscallion, happy to snow the townspeople like Mayor Shinn (Jefferson Mays, apoplectic) and his wife, Eulalie (Jayne Houdyshell, majestic), with a combination of flattery and distraction. #THE RAILWAY MAN MOVIE REVIEWS HOW TO#I promise you, I did not get angry at the man who rented it to me for not showing me how to change the reed. I played the clarinet quite poorly in the fifth grade. And Why is no one showing these kids how to play an instrument seems like an odd problem for Marian to feel so helpless about. But - shouldn’t she step up? Hill does actually deliver the items they order it’s not a swindle. Instead, he introduces the Think Method, which requires no practice, and which Marian the librarian slash town music teacher sees right through. He orders them cornets and trombones and uniforms via the Wells Fargo wagon, but he’s a tin-ear and a fumble-fingers himself, so he can’t actually teach them any music. In Willson’s story, the salesman “Professor” Hill tricks entire towns into believing he can shape their boys into a brass band though he doesn’t know anything about music himself. That’s grift.Īlthough I have known this show for most of my life, I admit I’ve never entirely understood why Harold Hill is supposed to be such a crook. Don’t do it, neighbors! That’s flimflam, that’s roguery. I hate to tell you, but these folks are asking you to part with nearly $700 to sit up close. There’s only one single solitary thing that feels modern in River City, and that’s the ticket prices. A teeny-tiny clockwork horse even gallops onstage right out of our shared deep memory. The young, talented, dance-mad company spins and leaps with all the vigor of a remembered childhood. Every t that stands for trouble has been crossed, every choice feels rose-colored and flannel-cozy. But director Jerry Zaks solves that by bringing ’em front and center, to stand (or dance) on the stage lip and radiate Golden Age glamour. Their celebrity and undeniable presence seem to have overcome any little concerns about fissures between the performers and their characters - there are places where Foster’s mezzo strains in the high stuff and Jackman goes sour. You won’t need to trouble yourself with anything beyond the sweetness of Meredith Willson’s con-man-redemption musical, itself a tribute to both Willson’s own Iowa upbringing and his flute-playing years with John Philip Sousa’s band.Ĭertainly it feels like a glitzy, age-of-musicals move to cast Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman it’s increasingly rare to see a pair of stage stars of this megawattage sing and dance together. Instead, you can set yourself down at the Winter Garden where it is 1957’s version of 1912 again. This ain’t one-a-them newfangled, updated, anti-nostalgia versions of a classic. For the production now on Broadway, every detail has been retrogressed to the days of yore, from the typeface on the playbills to the red-white-and-blue title cards outside to the heavy reliance on Star Quality. The Music Man wants you to know that the old ways are best. From The Music Man, at the Winter Garden.
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