The Music Man - Behind the Scenes

The Washington Community Center filled with song Tuesday evening as a stage full of more than 30 performers rehearsed the song ?76 Trombones,? one of the better-known songs from the 1957 Broadway play ?The Music Man? by Meredith Wilson.

As the singing ended, director Don Hughes stood in front of the stage, remembering how small the large stage at the community theater became as he got all the actors in the performance on stage. A laptop in front of him controlled the music that the group sang to. He seemed happy with the performance, but decided to ask the performers what they thought.

?Do you want to do it again?? he asked.

Many of the singers acknowledged that they wanted to do the medley over. Even after starting vocal rehearsals in April, the group decided with only 10 days until opening night for the area?s ?every 25-year? presentation of ?The Music Man,? the group was eager to get in as much rehearsal time as possible.

The play opens July 21 and runs every day for the next nine days. Jeff Crone, the lighting director, commented that this is the 35

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anniversary of the Community Center. He said Washington Community Theater had performed ?The Music Man? in February 1962 and that it had also been performed about 25 years later.

?Once every quarter century we are doing it,? he said.

Hughes, a music teacher in the Washington School district and an old hand at stage performance, said he had been involved with eight other productions of the musical. Still, this is only his second play at the center seat, having directed the performance of ?Man of La Mancha? last summer. He confirmed excitedly the scale of the performance is large, with more than 75 members of the cast and crew. He said his co-director Beth McBride had been the first to suggest ?The Music Man.?

?Over the last few years we have done some lesser known musicals,? Hughes said. ?We were trying to look for something that would really have that crowd appeal. The Iowa connection is fun. Coming in and doing this 100 years after the time the play takes place. The biggest thing is that we really wanted to do the show. Both Beth and I love the show.?

The musical follows silver-tongued con man ?Professor? Harold Hill has he arrives in the fictional Iowa town of River City and convinces the locals to allow him to organize a boys? band as a way of protecting the children from the sin and vice of a pool table in town. While there, he falls in love with Marian, the town librarian.

Hughes said he remembers watching the 1962 movie ?The Music Man? starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones every year on Independence Day weekend.  He said the music and the feel-good atmosphere of the movie caught his attention. Hughes said the barbershop quartet was one of the high points. He cites that this is the 50

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anniversary of the movie.

?People can expect quite a bit,? he said. ?Some great singing, for one thing. We?ll see some dancing and some neat sets. It?s going to be a good show.?

With the number of performances, two roles in the film ? Winthrop and Amaryllis ? were double booked. The actors will perform every other show. Logan Hanson, son of Chris and Sheila Hanson, and Andy Jeffrey, son of Troy and Carolyn Jeffrey, will play Winthrop on alternate nights. The two friends had tried out for the role together.

?He?s this little kid ? his father died and he was born with a lisp,? Hanson said, describing his character. ?Marian describes him as this 10-year-old problem child. Along comes this guy Harold Hill and he gets his confidence back.?

Jeffrey said that when he planned to try out, he spent hours learning the lisp. He said that his grandmother had him read a line with many S sounds. He credits the practice with getting the role.

Both actresses who play Amaryllis ? Gwen Flannery, daughter of Diane and Ryan Flannery, and Grace McCune, daughter of Kris and Chris McCune ? both performed in the production of ?Annie.? Gwen said her father had told her about the role when it came up.

McCune said that her brother had inspired her to try out for performance. She said he was in speech and had been in plays.

?I felt like I had to follow in his footsteps,? she said. ?This year I tried out for this, which was terrifying. I get really nervous. Beth McBride was my elementary principal. When I get nervous my face turns red. It was really bad.?

Flannery said that while they are in a large scene, learning the role had been easy. She said it helped that she already knew the actors playing Winthrop.

?I?ve known Logan for a long time and I know Andy from band,? she said.

Mackenzie Roth said that in studying for her role as Marian the Librarian, the lead female character, she felt it was important to understand the character. Following in the footsteps of such people as Shirley Jones, she felt she needed to have a good understanding of Marian before the performance.

?She?s a pretty complex character,? Roth said. ?The people in town think that she?s kind of sly and kind of a floozy in town. She?s really not, but everyone thinks she is. As the show progresses, she begins to change into a different sort of character than she was in the beginning. I think that?s the best thing about her.?

With this being her fifth performance at the community center, Roth said that her experience in acting has led to what she hopes will be a career. After trying out for a performance with her friends and then when she joined speech team she learned she enjoyed acting. She is studying theater performance in college and hopes to move to one of the coasts to pursue an acting career. She calls acting her ?passion.?

In addition to the on-stage roles, much of the work of the play goes on behind the scenes. Dalton Christner is the stage manager for the show. He said that his job is to organize everything backstage. Making sure that all the props and the background scenery is in place is his job. His duties run from the days of the first audition to the last show. He said that acting isn?t his favorite thing, but he enjoys working backstage.

?Stage manager isn?t a job many people like to do ? I?m one of the few who likes to do it,? Christner said. ?I like the organization of backstage. I like being able to see how everything is put on. It seems like when I?m acting, I?m not in control as much as when I?m working backstage.?

He said that he had asked Hughes to be stage manager for ?Man of La Mancha.? For this show, Hughes had come to him about the job.