Right now I'm in rehearsals for a Thursday opening of "The Music Man", which is being mounted by the Adult Division of the Our Gang Players in Barnegat, NJ. (Here's some more information from the Times Beacon.)
The show, of course, is the brainchild of Meredith Willson (shown here on a first-day cover of his 1999 stamp), who wrote book, music and lyrics and collaborated with Franklin Lacey on story. Willson again hit paydirt in the 1960's with "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", but also did a number of other things, including sit for a few years as a panelist on the ABC panel show "The Name's The Same".I will be playing trombone for this show. I love doing pit work; I just wish I had more opportunities to do so close to home. This is a smallish pit, but we have some good players and they've all made "the new guy" feel at home. Steve Strouse is our musical director, a wonderfully talented individual, and our brass section also features trumpeter Ray Bohn, who also plays a little bass. Students from Pinelands High School and Southern Regional High School will round out our pit.
I urge you to come out and see this show and support local theatre. However, if you want to see how others have treated this golden material, I point you to a couple of DVD's you can scarf from Amazon by clicking on the links: the 1962 big-screen version with Robert Preston as Professor Harold Hill and Shirley Jones as Marian the Librarian (and Ron Howard, back when he had hair), or the more recent ABC TV-movie with Matthew Broderick as Hill and uber-adorable Kristen Chenoweth as Marian.
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