Meredith Willson's The Music Man (2000 Broadway Revival Cast)

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Free Music Notes for Meredith Willson's The Music Man (2000 Broadway Revival Cast)

Free Music Review: No Trouble Here
Hit: 5 Stars

I think this revival ranks up there with the Nathan Lane/Faith Prince revival of Guys and Dolls and Showboat, and ahead of the more recent Cabaret and Kiss Me Kate revivals. I heartily recommend that you buy it. I frankly was not prepared to like it or think it as good as I did.

Craig Bierko grows on you; the longer you listen to him, the more he sounds like Robert Preston, and his vocal range and full voice are better than Preston's on the songs that are actually sung. Rebecca Luker sounds almost as good as Barbara Cook, but Cook sounds almost as good as Maria Callas or Leontyne Price, so that makes Luker pretty good.

The actors who play Mayor Shinn and his wife are good, but not Paul Ford and Hermoine Gingold, but perhaps it is not fair to fault them for not mimicking those idiosyncratic character actors. They sing better than they talk.

I usually am leery of revivals because I tend to think the original, if it is immortal, as this show is, cannot be equaled, so why bother; I am glad these people bothered. Susan Stroman is gifted; her arrangements took from the original and added something new, and I can only imagine the choreography. One area where this revival has the original score beat is in its inclusion of more of Whaddaya Talk, scene change music and longer versions of Shipoopi and dance music for 76 Trombones, plus some more of the barbershop music. This foursome is not the Buffalo Bills, but who is; they are on key and brassy, and loud. And putting My White Knight back into this show was a good move; it beats Being in Love.

If you had to buy only one version of the Music Man, I suppose I would recommend the original, more for historical purposes and to have Preston's version of Trouble. As good as Bierko is, that is perhaps his weakest song, and he is by no means bad; he just is not pure Preston. That is getting picky though; Bierko is very good and has the deep booming quality to his voice that Preston had, and apparently is a charmer on stage, with good chemistry with Rebecca Luker. All things considered, you would not go wrong buying this version. It is a great revival.

I have not mentioned the movie version, with Shirley Jones doing Being in Love, but otherwise close to the original score. The movie comes in third, behind this one and the original. One last thing: the sound quality of this recording is magnificent. The strings and horns come through vibrantly and clear as a bell, as do the voices, with no rumble or shrillness.

A footnote; when the original Music Man won the best musical Tony, beating out West Side Story, Bernstein and Sondheim and other snobs who thought this was inferior corn and not worthy of WSS, pouted and sulked and held it against Meredith Wilson, who was no rube, but had a long and distinguished career before he wrote the Music Man, but only one really big shew afterward: Molly Brown. Bizet basically only wrote Carmen, so Wilson can be remembered for basically only writing The Music Man, so that is not so bad.

Hopefully, selling you on the idea of buying this cd will be easier than selling skeptical turn-of-the-century Iowans on the idea that their kids could play band instruments...

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