‘TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY’: IHS brings ‘Music Man’ fun to Bowlus

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April 6, 2017 - 12:00 AM

Beware the con man! Beware the charlatan! Beware the silver-tongued moralizer, the two-bit Jimmy Swaggart, the oily politician and the dollar-drunk preacher! Beware the clever pitchman.
This is the subject on which “The Music Man,” one of the most incorruptible pieces of popular Americana, spins its antic tale of a conniving musical-instrument salesman who is redeemed by his love for a small-town librarian in the year 1912. The musical made its Broadway debut in 1957 and, five years later, transferred its sunny magic to film, where Robert Preston’s mesmerizing performance as Professor Harold Hill helped give this tale of a small-town Iowa bunko man the shape of a modern fable.
Starting tonight, “The Music Man” will take its turn on the stage at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center  in Iola High School’s not-to-be-missed staging of the Meredith Wilson classic.
Any version of a show called “The Music Man” will inevitably rise or fall on the talents of its titular lead, and so it’s a relief to say that IHS senior Aaron S. Terhune, in the role of “Professor” Harold Hill, earns his 76 trombones and then some.
Terhune sings and dances and displays, throughout the nearly two-hour show, an unctuous — but, ultimately, loveable — charm as the boater-hatted salesman who coasts into River City on the promise of a get-rich-quick scheme.
But of course Hill’s cheerful hucksterism is no match for the show’s doe-eyed ingenue, Marian Paroo (played by the ever-magnetic Karly McGuffin), whose unshakeable virtue is the maypole around which the plot strands of this chipper confection weave.
The show, directed by Richard Spencer, includes a cast of nearly 30, and there’s not a dud in the bunch. Isaiah Wicoff is terrific as the bloviating mayor. Sophie Whitney plays his wife with impeccable comic timing. Bobby Lewis is touching as the shy, lisping Winthrop Paroo, who delivers a shimmering, sibilant breakout solo at a key point in the show. Braden Plumlee, Kendall Jay, Glen Riddle and Alex Smith provide inexhaustible comic joy as dour city councilmen who transform themselves, after a pep talk from the music man, into a camp barbershop quartet. Quentin Mallette reprises — and with similar brio — the Buddy Hackett role of conman-gone-straight Marcellus Washburn. Erin Klubeck is flawless as Marian’s mother, the kindly Mrs. Paroo.
Unlike real life, where the flimflam man typically makes off with your shirt, the “The Music Man” is an old-fashioned, happy-ending show, which insists that there is meaning to be found, even if it’s only fleeting, in the spontaneous mayhem of the everyday.
“The Music Man” runs tonight and Friday at 7 p.m. at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. Admission is free to the public.

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