“He’s a spellbinder,” cries one character about Harold Hill, the centerpiece of Meredith Willson’s bouncy, buoyant 1957 American musical about a con artist redeemed by love. He could just as easily have been talking about the great showman who portrays him, Hugh Jackman.
The Aussie actor may have found international fame brandishing Wolverine’s metal claws in the X-Men movies, but his natural habitat seems to be the musical theatre stage, where he’s commanded attention starring in Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed London production of Oklahoma! and winning a well-deserved Tony Award as entertainer Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz on Broadway. He’s also commanding extraordinary ticket prices: a seat at the Winter Garden will set you back as much as $550 (apx £400).
In this lively revival, he’s a traveling salesman in 1912 who steps off a train in River City, Iowa, and proceeds to charm the townspeople into buying instruments and band uniforms for their kids, with the promise that he’ll teach them to play. Hill’s real plan, though, is to take their money and skip town. But that all changes when he falls for the town librarian, Marian Paroo – played with heart and pizzazz by Sutton Foster – whose immediate dislike of Hill gradually melts aways as she realises how much joy and pride he’s brought to the community.
It’s not a premise laden with great psychological depth, but it certainly offers a bounty of infectious musical numbers for Jackman and Foster, who dazzled London audiences last year in Anything Goes. She doesn’t have the lyric soprano range the role typically requires, but she brings so much appealing earthiness to the role, and to songs such as the soaring romantic ballad Till There Was You, it hardly matters.
The pair’s winning chemistry is at its best in the playful Marian the Librarian number, as Hill attempts to woo her by cavorting around her workplace, dancing on tables and tossing books to the ensemble while Marian tries to restore order. The show’s emotional high point, however, comes from young Benjamin Pajak as Marian’s shy, uncommunicative brother Winthrop, when he can’t contain his excitement about the arrival of the instruments in The Wells Fargo Wagon and bursts forth in song.
Director Jerry Zaks and choreographer Warren Carlyle have reworked parts of the show to play to Jackman’s and Foster’s strengths, namely dancing. It’s effective at times – this may be the first time the finale ever included tap dancing – but occasionally seems as if their quest is to have Jackman onstage as much as possible to justify those ticket prices. Did he really need to ride in on said Wagon? And, for that matter, did Hairspray songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman have to rewrite the lyrics to Act II opener Shipoopi to make it more MeToo-appropriate? “The girl who’s hard to get”/”But you can win her yet” has been replaced with “The boy who’s seen the light”/“To treat a woman right.”
Still, it’s Jackman that audiences are paying the big bucks for. And the endless exuberance that he and Foster bring to the stage makes The Music Man a joyous, blissful Broadway event.
Booking to November 6. Tickets: musicmanonbroadway.com
