Would THE MUSIC MAN work on Broadway again? — Page 2

I agree, I don't see anything dated in The Music Man. It's a period piece - but still manages to touch and win over an audience.
Now "West Side Story" while a great musical, has a very dated book.

As for the "dated" issue, well yes, it is dated. It was a product of its time. Heck, it was a show about a traveling saleman selling "boys band" equipment. These days you say the words "boys band" people thing N'SYNC or Backstreet. guh!

But the dated nature is part of its charm I believe. Certain shows can't be updated, but I guess that could be a whole other thread....! hmmmmmmm.

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Was just watching the special material on the DVD with my 11-year-old daughter (who aspires to play Harold Hill in her summer camp production, God love her!), and they said the studio wanted Sinatra (at the height of his movie stardom) for Harold Hill, but Meredith W. said "No Preston, no movie". Wish they'd been able to do the same for Harvey and Hairspray.

Anyhoo I think what it would take to sell a new Music Man is a new Robert Preston. Not someone channeling the genius. Not someone taking it in a whole new direction. But someone as unique, dynamic, twinkling, grounded, riveting, and pounding with energy in his own way as The Man was in his way. It's like asking for a new Ethel Merman, I know. But it would sure sell it for me.

I don't understand the need to update everything! Music Man is set in a real-life period. People go see Shakespear, Ibsen and greek plays without crying that it needs to be updated.

Something that is "dated" is regarded as so out-of-sync that it has become obsolete or inappropriate for our time. The Music Man, as I wrote above, was written in 1957 as a period piece set in 1912. If it seems old-fashioned, it was knowingly written that way. There weren't traveling salesman selling boy bands around the country in 1957 either. (Even in 1949's Death of a Salesman, the traveling salesman is going the way of the dinosaur.) Beyond the show's quaint surface, the show features a town full of neurotics that can't stand each other dealing with a subversive outsider who turns the town upside down. That score is also jittery and percussive and incredibly unusual. Yes, the show is 48 years old, but dated? Not in the least. If you want to see dated, head straight to Sweet Charity.

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My two cents. I'm doing a production of this show as we speak, and it still works like gang busters. The premise is irresistable, and despite it's corn, the score is completely infectious, and when you have a solid cast, the show can be in turn hilarious, exhilirating and even moving. It's a stoic audience member who doesn't respond to that finale.

That said, the academic in me will go on a limb and say that I think the show is, indeed, dated. At least dated in terms of the intent behind the original production. The show was written to appeal to the parents of the baby boomer generation (indeed the original Winthrop and Amaryllis would have been baby boomers themselves). I think the show was written to be nostalgic of a period of Americana, that in 1959, was still fondly remembered -- either first hand, or from stories on Grandma's lap.

So many references in the show are completely obsolete today, that an audience would have to have a mini dictionary to get all the jokes in the script.

Does that mean the show no longer works? Of course not. How dated is something like WEST SIDE STORY? SOUTH PACIFIC? HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS? A CHORUS LINE?

But all these shows still work, and I think credit is ultimately due to the writing team. All these shows, including THE MUSIC MAN, are so solidly constructed, I think audiences will continue to embrace them long after their "timliness" has worn off.

Updated On: 6/10/05 at 11:37 AM