We open our 2023 Shedd Theatricals season with Meredith Willson's 1957 "Valentine", as he called it, to his Iowa hometown, The Music Man. Inspired by his boyhood in Mason City, Willson spent over a decade developing a show about a traveling salesman who helps a little boy in a small Iowa town overcome a speech impediment by inspiring him to join a band. The Music Man opened at the Majestic Theatre on December 19, 1957.
The year is 1912 and the fast-talking traveling salesman "Professor" Harold Hill arrives in River City, Iowa promising the townsfolk that he can stear the town’s youth from “going bad” by establishing a boys band outfitted with magnificent uniforms and instruments he would be able to sell them (of course). It's all part of a big sales pitch (he doesn't know a thing about music and always leaves town a town before anyone figures out that instruments and uniforms aren't enough to make a band! But contending with Marian Paroo, the completely no-nonsense town librarian wasn't part of his plan. Marian sees Hill exactly for what he is and wants nothing to do with him when he tries to make her his newest conquest, but when he helps her young brother Winthrop overcome the severe shyness he suffers from due to his lisp, she falls in love with him. Before he knows it, he falls in love right back…and is stuck!
With classic tunes that include "Ya Got Trouble," "Goodnight My Someone", "The Wells Fargo Wagon", "Till There Was You", "Shipoopi" and the show-stopping "Seventy-Six Trombones", The Music Man is an irresistible, all-American musical for the entire family!
| | Rock Island (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Ya Got Trouble (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Goodnight My Someone (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Ya Got Trouble (reprise) (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | The Sadder But Wiser Girl (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | The Wells Fargo Wagon (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | It's You (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Shipoopi (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Lida Rose (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Will I Ever Tell You? (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Lida Rose (reprise) (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | It's You - Ballet (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |
| | Goodnight My Someone (reprise) (1957) The Music Man Meredith Willson (w/m) |