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Jackman’s Harold is more a wooer than a rabble-rouser, dazzling the town’s skeptical librarian (Sutton Foster) and leading its children in a series of invigorating dance numbers that have been extended to let him and the show’s massive ensemble shine. The New York Times’ Jesse Green called Jackman’s turn “ smart but strangely inward,” and Time Out’s Adam Feldman said he’s “ too likeable to take seriously and too patently slick to be believed.” If there’s a quality missing from Jackman’s portrayal, it’s, in a word, Trumpiness. Barnum, seemed like an ideal fit for Harold Hill, but most reviews have noted that there’s something a little off in his portrayal. Jackman, a lifelong song-and-dance man who recently took on the role of iconic American huckster P.T.
Are the people of River City, a diverse bunch in this colorblind production, really that worked up about the encroachment of modernity? If Harold Hill isn’t selling lightly coded racial anxiety, what exactly is he selling? Instead of warning against “shameless” ragtime, Hugh Jackman’s Harold Hill cautions his crowd about “modern music ” “jungle animal instinct” has been swapped for “the depths of a syncopated frenzy.” Cutting the race-baiting from Harold’s signature song feels like an easy enough fix, but combined with the excision of a line branding the rambunctious teen Tommy Djilas-whose Serbian surname would have marked him as an ethnic other in 1912-for being the son of “one a’them day laborers south a’town,” the elision leaves a vacuum at the show’s center. The new version, directed by Broadway veteran Jerry Zaks, mercifully cuts the pageant in which the town’s residents dress up as racist caricatures of Native Americans, and thanks to new lyrics by Hairspray’s Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the rousing singalong “Shipoopi” has been transformed from a jaunty endorsement of nonconsensual groping to an anthem in praise of men “who’ll wait till a girl says when.” But while “woke Shipoopi” has come in for a good ribbing, the changes to “Ya Got Trouble” have received scant notice, despite the fact that they fundamentally change what The Music Man is about. But in the new production, the offending phrases have simply been wiped away, part of a wave of changes aimed at adapting the 65-year-old show for contemporary viewers, some of whom have paid upward of $700 for their seats at the Winter Garden Theatre.
While “woke Shipoopi” has come in for a good ribbing, the changes to “Ya Got Trouble” have received scant notice, despite the fact that they fundamentally change what The Music Man is about.Īudiences seeing The Music Man on Broadway in 1957, at the height of the moral panic over white children’s exposure to the corrupting force of Black rock ’n’ roll, wouldn’t have needed the subtext of Harold Hill’s homily spelled out for them. As his sales pitch takes on the fervor of a revival meeting, Harold paints a dire picture for the local parents: Pool halls, he warns, lead to drinking, gambling, smoking, and, eventually, to “your son, your daughter” being grabbed by “the arms of a jungle animal instinct,” all fueled by the “shameless” rhythms of ragtime music. Most of the upheavals with which he attempts to scare his future marks are comically picayune: the demise of horse-and-cart racing or the incursion of off-color slang, like the dreaded word “swell.” But in order to close the deal, he plays to an uglier, more deep-seated fear, one that makes a story set over a century ago feel suddenly up-to-the-minute. In his character-defining song “Ya Got Trouble,” Harold builds the novelty of the town’s recently acquired pool table into an existential threat to River City’s very way of life.
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(So did Meredith Willson, who wrote The Music Man based on his experiences growing up in Mason City, Iowa, in the early 20 th century.) And it only takes one question-“What’s new around here?”-for him to figure out how to get these skeptical Midwesterners eating out of his hand. Harold Hill may not, as the traveling salesmen grumble in The Music Man’s opening number, “know the territory,” but he does know these people. Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.