Written by Meredith Willson, The Music Man spent several years in development before finally opening on Broadway in December 1957. It proved to be an instant success, earning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical during its 1,375 performances. The cast recording would top the charts for twelve weeks and win the first Grammy Award for Best Original Cast Album. It was turned into a film version in 1962, with Robert Preston reprising the role he had made his own during the Broadway run.
Fresh from his Broadway triumph as accountant-turned-con-man Leo Bloom in Mel Brooks's The Producers, Matthew Broderick next tackled another of the American musical theater's most lovable rogues, The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill. As shepherded by the producers of the multi-Oscar®-nominated Chicago, this energetic TV adaptation of Meredith Willson's evergreen plays up its still-potent metaphors of middle-American hope and redemption via sparkling new arrangements, yet wisely grounds its credibility in the subtle dramatic shadings of stars Broderick and Kristin Chenoweth. Vocally, Broderick may lack the bigger-than-life bravado of the original's Robert Preston, but it's precisely that scaled-down sincerity that carries his Hill throughout. Even familiar set pieces like "Seventy Six Trombones," "Ya Got Trouble," "Gary, Indiana," and the show's enduring ballad, "Till There Was You," seem informed from within, rather than splashed with garish production overkill. It's a brisk, smart adaptation of a true American theater icon. -–Jerry McCulley
