Goodman’s colorful, clever ‘Music Man’ gives Marian’s journey its due

An ultra-affectionate caricature of early 20th century middle America, the musical comedy “The Music Man” looks nostalgically back at Iowa in 1912 from the perspective of the 1950s. It brims with unrelenting confidence in America while gently satirizing the industrious seriousness of its citizens. It’s an upbeat show — filled with rhythmic patter from its very first scene — calling out for Americans to have more fun, embrace the nation’s brassiness, and fall in love. It won the best musical Tony award in 1958, beating out, believe it or not, “West Side Story,” which insightfully depicted the nation’s social problems.

So if you’re looking for a light entertainment, then “The Music Man” can be your ice cream on a hot summer day. It will lift your mood. You can bring the kids.

The Goodman production, directed by Mary Zimmerman, exudes a vibrant energy. Set designer Daniel Ostling fills the stage with oversaturated colors, and brings a playful use of perspective, particularly when the townspeople eagerly await the Wells Fargo Wagon (think your Amazon deliveryperson) and we see said wagon pass by the rear of the stage, getting bigger with each pass (it could use at least one more pass, though).

The show, pleasantly stuffed with production numbers, boasts lots of clever choreography from Denis Jones, recently Tony-nominated for “Tootsie.” Most importantly, there’s Meredith Willson’s score (aided by music director Jermaine Hill), which includes songs that must be considered classically classic: “76 Trombones,” “Ya Got Trouble,” “Gary, Indiana” and “ ’Til There Was You.”

It’s also a production split in two simultaneous worlds. Zimmerman and team exaggerate the town’s ensemble to a comic extreme, appropriate for a show where one of the biggest numbers has the silliest of titles: “Shipoopi.” Meanwhile, for the two lead characters and the love story between them, she plumbs for realism and depth. That latter choice, both interesting and problematic, sacrifices a bit of the show’s joyful spirit for an occasional, late-blooming dose of believability and redemption.

For those new to the story (there’s a 1962 film starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones), Harold Hill (played here by Geoff Packard) is a traveling salesman, a charming huckster who captivates his targets and convinces the town that what they really need — what will protect them from the outside world of vice and change — is a marching band. He sells them the instruments, the instruction manuals, the uniforms, but can’t read a note of music and plans to escape as soon as his last shipment of goods is paid for. Seeing through him from the start, along with the self-interested Mayor Shinn (an outstanding Ron E. Rains, exaggerated but convincing), is Marian Paroo (Monica West), the town’s librarian and piano teacher, who also happens to be unforgivably single (according to her Irish mum, played beautifully by Mary Ernster).

Harold flirts with Marian, hoping his seduction can delay her finding out his flim-flam. But Marian chooses to keep the truth to herself, not out of naivete or emotional vulnerability, but because she sees the sudden hope the would-be band brings to her sad brother Winthrop (Carter Graf).

Liz Lauren

There isn’t much fun to the early friction between Packard and West, which makes some Act I scenes less amusing than they could be. And Packard, absolutely skillful all around, isn’t quite the style of charismatic performer who can pull off rakish charm so over-flowing as to overcome all resistance. (Picture Dick Van Dyke, who starred in the 1980 Broadway revival, or Hugh Jackman, who will star in the next one coming in September.)

What Zimmerman, a master of investing complex stories with humanity, brings to “The Music Man” is a deep character investment in the woman, asking for real how the ultra-intelligent and thoughtful Marian can fall in love with, in this depiction, a rather common con man.

West brings surprising layers, even a touch of her brother’s sadness, to Marian, and for a long while it’s hard to imagine her ever falling for Packard’s Hill. But she does, in a low-key sort of way rather than a big, giant musical comedy kind of way, and that makes the final sequence here — pure genre contrivance — a bit more believable, at least for a minute or two before it just has to revert to silliness.

For this reason, I found Act II more compelling than Act I, which would usually be reversed. Act I has its focus mostly on Harold Hill, while Act II is really all about Marian. And in this production, Marian is infinitely more interesting.

Steven Oxman is a local freelance writer