Jesse
Green

February 10, 2022

Unfortunately, that flatness is endemic to the production. The central element of Loquasto’s set is a full-width barn wall whose doors occasionally slide open to reveal vignettes played out against drops painted in the style of Grant Wood (another Iowan). But even when the barn disappears completely, the staging feels two-dimensional — and so old-fashioned (except for the astonishingly good dancers performing Carlyle’s athletic choreography) that it might have come straight from 1957, when “The Music Man” premiered on Broadway. Or even 1912, when it’s set.

Greg
Evans

February 10, 2022

Warren Carlyle’s energetic, song-and-dance choreography blends vaudeville panache, ballet and pre-Depression dance craze, hitting all the right spots at all the right angles. Still, anyone who has seen the thrilling movies of MJ or the boundary-pushing explorations of Flying Over Sunset might be left a bit un-wowed. Like so much else with this Music Man, from Loquasto’s attractive, wheat-colored turn-of-the-century costumes to Brian MacDevitt’s autumn lighting, the dancing is expert – effortless even – yet still and all underwhelming. The Music Man lives up to every expectation except the most crucial one: Surprise.

Thom
Geier

February 10, 2022

While this glossy but uneven revival of the 1957 classic, which opened Thursday night at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre, is clearly intended as a star vehicle for the Tony-winning showman, Jackman consistently cedes the spotlight to allow the ensemble to shine. And shine they (mostly) do, particularly in group numbers like “76 Trombones” and “Marian the Librarian” that showcase Warren Carlyle’s often athletic choreography.

Adam
Feldman

February 10, 2022

Yet while this Music Man is a solid and professional piece of work, and includes many incidental pleasures, the hoped-for enchantment never arrives. The production has reassembled much of the top-shelf creative team behind the thrilling 2017 Bette Midler revival of Hello, Dolly!, including director Jerry Zaks, choreographer Warren Carlyle and designer Santo Loquasto. And as in Dolly, it has surrounded its star with well-proved talents: Broadway darling Sutton Foster as his local foil, the wary librarian Marian Peroo; Marie Mullen as her excitable Irish mother; Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell as River City’s malaprop-prone mayor and his fussy wife; a loosey-goosey Shuler Hensley as Hill’s old friend and accomplice. The vehicle is polished; what it lacks is drive.

Charles
Isherwood

February 10, 2022

More’s the pity, then, that this undeniably polished production, with its ticket-sales-galvanizing star, Hugh Jackman, proves to be a sadly mechanical, overproduced and overdesigned revival of a musical that needs tender care to allow its undeniable charms to bloom.

Christian
Lewis

February 10, 2022

After sitting through opening night (critics were barred from previews, so we all furiously typed away our reviews right after leaving the theater) I can say that this show did feel like part of Broadway history—not “history” as in a precedent-smashing achievement or success, but “history” as in dated, part of the past, a nostalgia-fueled replica of one of the previous revivals. Everything about this revival of The Music Man felt generic, it never justified its existence.

Juan A.
Ramirez

February 10, 2022

It’s a good thing these two leads radiate enough star wattage to power the gargantuan Winter Garden Theatre, where the second Broadway revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 musical opened tonight, because the work itself is anything but electric. Though unfair to compare it to another classic which premiered seven years later, The Music Man scans today as a bargain bin Hello, Dolly!: a paean to the American hustle too enamored by its own size to land any worthwhile remarks about the highs and lows of that same scrappy optimism.

Associated Press

Mark
Kennedy

February 10, 2022

But Jackman is but just one astonishing part of the subtly reworked Meredith Wilson musical that opened Thursday night at the Winter Garden Theatre. It overflows with talent, clever ideas and a hard-working multicultural cast.

Johnny
Oleksinski

February 10, 2022

Frank
Scheck

February 10, 2022

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There’s nothing revelatory about this Music Man, and that’s probably just as well. In its determined effort to evoke the musical comedy Broadway of yore and make us feel happy simply to be in a theater again, the show ironically feels urgently timely.

David
Gordon

February 11, 2022

Helen
Shaw

February 11, 2022

Certainly it feels like a glitzy, age-of-musicals move to cast Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman; it’s increasingly rare to see a pair of stage stars of this megawattage sing and dance together. Their celebrity and undeniable presence seem to have overcome any little concerns about fissures between the performers and their characters — there are places where Foster’s mezzo strains in the high stuff and Jackman goes sour. But director Jerry Zaks solves that by bringing ’em front-and-center, to stand (or dance) on the stage lip and radiate Golden Age glamor.

Tim
Teeman

February 11, 2022

The Music Man’s big, perhaps unintended surprise is that it becomes Marian’s show. It is Sutton Foster who ultimately commands our attention and applause, and it is Marian’s story and transformation we follow most closely. Foster not only sings beautifully, she acts this role perfectly—we follow Marian and hear her because of Foster’s intelligent inhabitation of her.