"There comes a moment in the latest Broadway production of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” when high spirits, terrific dancing and big stars align in an extended marvel of showbiz salesmanship. Unfortunately, that moment is the curtain call. Until then, the musical, which opened on Thursday night at the Winter Garden Theater, only intermittently offers the joys we expect from a classic revival starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster — especially one so obviously patterned on the success of another classic revival, “Hello, Dolly!,” a few seasons back."
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"Yet while this Music Man is a solid and professional piece of work, and includes many incidental pleasures, the hoped-for enchantment never arrives. The production has reassembled much of the top-shelf creative team behind the thrilling 2017 Bette Midler revival of Hello, Dolly!, including director Jerry Zaks, choreographer Warren Carlyle and designer Santo Loquasto. And as in Dolly, it has surrounded its star with well-proved talents: Broadway darling Sutton Foster as his local foil, the wary librarian Marian Paroo; Marie Mullen as her excitable Irish mother; Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell as River City’s malaprop-prone mayor and his fussy wife; a loosey-goosey Shuler Hensley as Hill’s old friend and accomplice. The vehicle is polished; what it lacks is drive. "
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"4/5 stars...Are there soothing and satisfying pleasures in familiarity, high voltage, and expert execution? By golly, yes. Will this 'Music Man’s' sweet nothings reveal anything previously unknown about the nature of life, love, or the pursuit of happiness right here in 2022? Egads! No...Given that 'The Music Man' is a grift, the stakes never get off the ground. It’s another way the production’s lavish attention to surface belies a blithe and curious hollowness."
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"So, rise or fall? This Music Man does both. The rousing ensemble numbers have their charms, like the unfailing show opener “Rock Island,” with its chug-chug-chugging cadence lurching to and fro with locomotive rhythms (Loquasto’s gorgeous train interior of dark wood and deep green velvets is an early visual high point). Is there another Golden Age (or close enough) musical that so economically and irresistibly sets up its entire premise in one fell swoop?"
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"Willson’s gem of a musical gets a fresh shine from director Jerry Zaks’ great-big-Broadway-show treatment. The cast is huge and hugely talented, the sets and costumes are an eyeful, and the stage effects are cleverly inventive...Warren Carlyle, a choreographer who revels in period dance, knows what to do with this enormous cast. More gratifying still, he’s respectful of Willson’s old-fashioned values."
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Meredith Willson’s classic musical proudly revels in its old-fashionedness. [It] features a bounty of riches in the cast, with many of the supporting players seeming almost too qualified for their roles.
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"This Professor Hill seems less a traveling salesman than a song-and-dance man on a second-class national tour. So ya got trouble in River City, and the miscasting of Jackman is hardly the only problem. Director Jerry Zaks has inexplicably opted for a cartoon version of the musical, with set and costume designer Santo Loquasto joining him as an over-the-top accomplice...Foster’s Marian has arrived, it seems, from a better production."
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"As Harold Hill in a glorious and exuberant new revival of 'The Music Man,' Jackman is like a coiled spring, effortlessly leaping onto desks, two-stepping with kids, tossing books into the air and pounding out a rhythm on his thighs...If there ever was a stage match for Jackman, Foster is it...Director Jerry Zaks is a master at the romantic, comedic romp and moves things along with a seemingly effortless crispness aided by Santo Loquasto’s lush sets."
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