THE MUSIC MAN at Goodspeed

[CT2NYC]

Posted: 5/19/19 at 1:41pm

After reading Terry Teachout's unqualified rave in the Wall Street Journal, I decided to pick up a ticket for this, and finish my upcoming day at The Flamingo Kid with a stop in East Haddam.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from his review:

"Unselfconsciously nostalgic to the point of corniness yet at the same time emotionally complex, 'The Music Man' is a masterpiece not generally recognized as such, and Connecticut's Goodspeed Musicals has given it a production that makes the most of its old-fashioned charms. Jenn Thompson's unpretentiously imaginative staging, in which Edward Watts and Ellie Fishman play to perfection the lead roles that were created on Broadway by Robert Preston and Barbara Cook, vacuums the choking cobwebs of convention off a too-familiar warhorse. The result is the best stage production of 'The Music Man' I've ever seen, one comparable in quality to the show's justly admired 1962 screen adaptation."

"For the record, two higher-profile productions of 'The Music Man' are now in the pipeline, the first directed by Mary Zimmerman for Chicago's Goodman Theatre (where it will open in July) and the second a 2020 Broadway revival directed by Jerry Zaks and starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. Promising though they both sound, they'll have to be truly exceptional to measure up to this one."