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The Music Man was probably the most highly-anticipated and buzzed about musicals opening on Broadway all through the pandemic. And as soon as the marquee lights shined once more, it made its grand opening lead by two beloved stars, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. The musical which first got here to Broadway in 1957 sticks to the basic canon of a Golden Age hit — the costumes, the lyrics, the storyline, the music. Nevertheless, the choreography, performed by Warren Carlyle, turns into a whole function by itself inside the present.
“I needed it to be actually unique. If you method the revival, you possibly can both select to observe within the footsteps or select to method it prefer it’s model new, and for Music Man, I simply needed it to be new,” Warren advised HollywoodLife.com in an EXCLUSIVE interview as a part of the Tony Contenders sequence. “Casting the youngsters was an enormous deal. An enormous deal, and it actually took us years to get it proper. They’re great and dance like maniacs!”
He continued, “It does one thing to the viewpoint. It forces a childlike surprise upon all the pieces as a result of they see issues in a really totally different means than us adults do. They usually truly simply cherished it. I cherished their viewpoint. I cherished having them within the room. They have been and are simply magnificent.”
Warren revealed that it took “over three years” to “actually hone in on the choreography.” “’76 Trombones’ in all probability took me 5 days to create initially as a result of it’s extremely complicated, extraordinarily layered, and we now have a forged of 46 folks,” he mentioned. “There’s 9 minutes of latest dance music, and there are loads of parts which are actually new and that take loads of work to get proper.”
A lot has modified since 1957 when The Music Man initially premiered on Broadway, particularly the modernization of girls. “This technology of theatregoers receives data in another way. We understand girls in another way. Sutton revolutionizes this function of Marian. She’s not a vapid sufferer, she’s a beautiful, extremely smart, very sturdy lady, and none of that existed within the earlier model. So I used to be completely satisfied to be concerned in one thing actually fairly unique,” Warren advised HL.
As for Hugh, Warren, who has labored with the multi-hyphenate on a number of tasks by way of the years, he mentioned he “needed him to be as comfy as potential.” “He’s such a superb actor and I needed his head out of the steps, and that’s what the repetition actually helped with. He’s so extremely free and he’s dancing higher than he’s ever danced,” the choreographer gushed. “That was my want, simply to ship him to a spot the place he was simply wildly comfy and wildly free. It appears like Harold Hill is developing with the steps, not Warren Carlyle, it’s distinctive to him.”
