Just imagine

The Music Man marches into Trinity

by Jeffrey Gantz

THE MUSIC MAN. Book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson. Story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. Directed by Oskar Eustis. Musical direction by Amanda Dehnert. Choreography by Sharon Jenkins. Set design by Christine Jones. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by D.M. Wood. With Fred Sullivan Jr., Jennifer Mudge Tucker, Brian McEleney, Barbara Orson, Robert Whitney, Adam Arian, Doug Brandt, Lawrence Bull, Phyllis Kay, Jennifer Schulte, Rebecca Bellingham, Joanna Liao, Jonathan Pezza, Jessica Enos, Barbara Meek, William Damkoehler, Stephen Berenson, Matthew DaSilva/Ethan Epstein, and musicians Amanda Dehnert, Kevin Fallon, Rachel Maloney, and Chris Turner. At Trinity Repertory Company, through June 7.

Meredith Willson's story of the con man who tries to sell himself to a small Iowa town as a bandleader may not have the social conscience of West Side Story (which it beat out for the Best Musical Tony in 1958). But it's got a great book, great music, and, as the worthy production now up at Trinity Repertory Company demonstrates, some serious ideas of its own as it walks the line between faith and fraud. Sure, "Professor" Harold Hill's "think system" -- the kids are expected to "think" the Minuet in G, hum it, then pick up their instruments and play it -- is a crock, but as he points out, that's how people learn to whistle, and anyway by the end the kids do produce a (barely) recognizable rendition of Beethoven's little gem. Harold himself thinks big -- it's a tribute to the power of his imagination that he can envision a marching band with 76 trombones, 110 cornets, "reeds like weeds," and "horns of every shape and kind." For all the flim-flam, he's a closet idealist: he turns River City's school board into a crack barbershop quartet, and he teaches the kids -- in particular the lisping Winthrop -- to believe in themselves.

That last achievement is what wins him the heart of Winthrop's sister, Marian the librarian, an out-of-the-closet idealist who can't find a man to meet her "My White Knight" standards. Marian knows Professor Hill's a phony, and she's about to turn him in when his transformation of Winthrop makes her realize that a guy doesn't have to be perfect to be good. Whereupon she in turn teaches him to believe in himself.

All of this emerges with unusual clarity in the current Trinity production, in part because the lack of a real orchestra -- there's just harmonica, jaw harp, banjo, guitar, fiddle, bass, and piano -- compels you to follow Professor Hill's lead and exercise your imagination. Christine Jones's set likewise makes much of little, with the main stage standing in for the streets of River City, the schoolroom, Marian's house, and the Madison Park footbridge while the overhead walkway serves as a library-stacks corridor, a hotel hallway, a balcony for serenading.

Fred Sullivan Jr. is no gyp as Harold, but I needed a lot of imagination to conjure up Robert Preston (who starred in the original 1957 Broadway production and the 1962 film) or Bert Parks (whom I saw on Broadway in 1961). Both Preston and Parks made the character larger than life, as much frustrated dreamer as sleazy scammer. Sullivan doesn't evince quite that kind of extravagance, and his singing, which passes muster in patter songs like "Trouble" and "Marian the Librarian," gets a little thin when it comes to "Till There Was You"; but his earnestness carries the day. As Marian, Jennifer Mudge Tucker is an indignant delight, prim, prissy, and (very) pretty; she gets a bit soggy in act two but rediscovers her sassy, teasing, loving librarian at the footbridge. And she can sing, with grit (this is an Iowa girl, after all) and bloom and real longing. Her highlight is "Will I Ever Tell You" against the barbershop quartet's "Lida Rose" (think of it as cross-talk between Harold and Marian).

Bouquets also to Robert Whitney, Adam Arian, Doug Brandt, and Lawrence Bull as the quartet; to the unexpectedly sexy "Pickalittle" quintet of Phyllis Kay, Jennifer Schulte, Rebecca Bellingham, Joanna Liao, and Barbara Orson (as the mayor's wife, every bit as awful as she should be); to Brian McEleney as a crusading but clueless Mayor Shinn; to Jonathan Pezza and Jessica Enos as "bad boy" Tommy and his "Ye gods!" girlfriend; to Matthew DaSilva (who'll alternate with Ethan Epstein) as a spontaneous Winthrop whose "Gary, Indiana" is uninhibited but not grating; and to the musicians (don't miss Chris Turner's tour-de-force harmonica overture) and the chorus (dreaming sweetly on "Wells Fargo Wagon").

Trinity artistic director Oskar Eustis has, to judge by the costumes, moved this version from the original 1912 (with its echo of the Gay '90s) to the 1950s, and he's fleshed out "Shipoopi" with a mini-history of pop music, from "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" to "Rock and Roll Music" to "Dancing in the Street" to Saturday Night Fever to hip-hop; there's also a 60-second Titanic parody. It's all harmless and enjoyable, though after Sullivan and Tucker break out like Travolta, they have some trouble re-establishing their characters. As for the much-hyped finale, where a real Rhode Island high-school band marches on stage to play "Seventy-Six Trombones," the Chariho High group did fine, but I'd as soon have seen Sullivan and Tucker smooch one more time in front of that barbershop quartet.