‘The Music Man’ short of 76 trombones, but it’s close

Get ready to hear “The Music Man” the way composer Meredith Willson intended.

Some of the finest musicians from the Everett Symphony have teamed up with the cast of the Northwest Savoyards Musical Theatre Society to provide a 16-piece orchestra to back up the musical’s nostalgic score of rousing marches, barbershop quartets and sentimental ballads, all of which have become popular standards from this classic bit of Americana.

“We’re using about 16 pieces, a little bit bigger orchestra than most community theaters get to have and this stuff is written to be played like that, so we are recapturing the original way this music is to be played,” said music director David Spring.

“The Music Man” will play for three weekends, beginning tonight and ending June 15, at PUD Auditorium in Everett. The show will have the full orchestra for every performance except for tonight, when the Everett Symphony performers play their final concert of the season. Tickets for tonight’s “Music Man” are being sold at a $5 discount.

This production of “The Music Man” also promises some big dance numbers, an extra dose of cute with a cast of kids that start at age 4, a charismatic leading man and a stunning-sounding soprano as the leading lady.

Watching “The Music Man” is like “watching Norman Rockwell on stage,” Spring said.

“It’s nice to harken back to a day when the most a kid had to worry about was reading a comic book or chewing gum in class,” Spring said. “That’s the appeal of it. It’s as corny as you can get; you can’t get much cornier. It’s oozing all that goofy stuff, but we like that corn.”

It’s appropriate, then, that the setting for all this corn is a made-up place in Middle America called River City, Iowa.

Willson wrote and composed “The Music Man” based on his affection for his small, boyhood town of Mason City, Iowa. Spring said a striking feature of the musical is that Willson was not only a classically trained flute player, but also a fine librettist who made the dialogue count. “There’s hardly a wasted word and there’s clever language in this thing and it’s very well researched,” Spring said.

Willson’s story revolves around fast-talking salesman Harold Hill, who cons the good people of River City into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band he says he wants to organize. The fact that Hill doesn’t know one end of a tuba from another doesn’t matter, because he plans on skipping town with the cash. His plans are foiled, however, when he falls for Marian the librarian, who helps Hill change his conning ways.

Spring and Savoyards producer Jeremy Edwards agreed that leading lady Shoshauna Mohlman, who plays Marian, has an absolutely beautiful voice.

“And a great smile,” Edwards said. “Everyone will fall in love with her. And she just doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. It’s incredible how she fits the role so well.”

Dan Niven, who plays Hill, will do a bang-up job playing a sympathetic character and “one that the audience wants to like,” Spring said.

“The Music Man” provides a wicked, romantic and touching good time and one that is purely family entertainment, Edwards said.

” ‘Music Man’ is thought to be a good family show and we tend to try to keep family shows out there for the community,” Edwards said of one of the goals of Northwest Savoyards, a musical theater group that’s been around since 1990.

Other highlights in this production are the young team of Winthrop and Amaryliss, played by Raphael Zimmerman and Katie Bartlett, a strong chorus group and the talented barbershop quartet.

This is the third time Spring has done “Music Man,” but he said it doesn’t get old seeing teenagers in the cast turned onto musical theater.

Said Spring: “It’s something that happened to me 30 years ago, so I feel like I’m passing the torch as to what the culture is about.”

Reporter Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com