I was 16 years old when I appeared in my high school’s production of The Music Man. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I’d grown up seeing the movie at least a dozen times. My father was a big fan of movie musicals, so my siblings and I would often throw on his VHS copies of Fiddler on the Roof or Damn Yankees.
I particularly liked The Music Man. It had a catchy, unusual score (that opening number!), great comedy, and a subversively charming title character. So disarming was Harold Hill, you tended to forget that he was sort of the 'badguy' of the piece – the con man who comes to River City to cheat the Iowans out of their hard-earned money. You couldn’t help but resent that silly Mayor Shinn for not liking him.
So by the time I got around to playing that same silly Shinn, I felt like a "Music Man" expert. I was keen to play Harold Hill, yet my best friend wound up nabbing the lead role out from under me! But I had fun playing the Mayor, and the show always stayed with me. I knew I wanted to do it again someday.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and here I am directing it for my inaugural musical at Rye Neck. It wasn’t an easy choice. The students really wanted to do something modern, and I wanted to give it to them. But the more I studied modern musical scripts, the more I realized how small their casts tend to be. Today's musicals usually feature just nine or ten actors total (to save on costs), with either a superfluous or non-existent chorus. I really wanted to choose a musical from this past decade, but I didn’t want to limit the cast size. The students at Rye Neck have boundless talent and creativity, and I wanted as many of them as possible to be featured in whatever show we chose.
Enter The Music Man. It had been quite awhile since I’d seen the show, so it was a pleasant surprise when I read the script and re-discovered that it featured so many good parts! By my count, there are 21 speaking roles, and that’s not including the one-liners that we tried so judiciously to evenly distribute. In this show, everyone gets to say something.
And even better, the show has such a huge heart. All of the characters (even that nosy Mayor) have an underlying goodness. There's genuine humanity in the script, which I really like. As Rye Neck’s theatre director, I'll always want our young cast to have fun, to sing and dance, and to learn the craft of putting on a show. But I also want them to work on shows that are well-written, that stand for something.
Assuming the direction of this year’s musical was no easy feat. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my two creative partners, Caitlin Corvini and Jesse Pellegrino. We're all relative newcomers at Rye Neck, but I’m very proud of what we accomplished. I also must point out the amazing set design of Preston Briggs, who built virtually everything you see on stage by hand, by himself, on his off-hours from his day job.
Most of all, I’m grateful to the students, who since early November have given up their free time to rehearse, learn their songs, dance up a storm, and say their lines with such amazing energy and humor. I've really enjoyed watching them develop during this process, and I can’t wait for you to see the results of their hard work.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy The Music Man!
Scott Harris
