By Shaina Selvaraju ’17

This fall, Staples Players will perform the Tony Award winning musical, “The Music Man.”

The musical centers on a con man named Harold Hill, played by Jacob Leaf ’17, who sells instruments to people in River City, Iowa with the promise that he will teach them how to play them.  The irony is Hill does not know how to play instruments and plans to skip town with their money before the town has a chance to find out his secret. However, his plans are foiled when Hill falls for the town’s librarian and true music teacher, Marian Paroo, played by Zoe Mezoff ’17.  

Co-directors David Roth and Kerry Long said they chose this musical because of its endearing message about community. In a sleepy town that does not know it needs to be awakened, “Harold ultimately brings the town together, loosens them up and allows them to really live and enjoy their lives,” Roth said.

Roth believes that with all of the violence and unrest in the country, “we thought that doing this show about the power of coming together as a community and the joy that that can inspire has a great message for this current climate,” Roth said.  “We all have the power to come together.”

Other important lead characters include Mrs. Paroo, played by Brooke Wrubel ’17 and Sophia Sherman ’18; Marcellus Washburn, played by Charlie Zuckerman ’18; and Mayor Shinn, played by Remy Laifer ’17 and Antonio Antonelli ’19. The cast of over 65 will also be joined by two eight-year-olds, Cooper Guisick and Ari Frimmer, who are double cast for the role of Winthrop.

Audience members will be exposed to a wide variety of music as “there [are] patter songs that resemble something close to an early form of rap, huge dance numbers, beautiful ballads and even a barbershop quartet,” Mezoff said.

Furthermore, the pit orchestra will perform all of the original scores from the musical, which is not frequently done.  Often, high school pits will use simplified or arranged music, however, the Staples pit will tackle the original Broadway orchestrations for the entire show.

Staples Players is also touting their set to be quite the showstopper as it will have over 37 set pieces.  “For this show, unlike our other shows, we do not have a stationary set but one that will be constantly moving,” Michael Dodd ’18, a crew member, said. “We have a lot of flats hanging from the ceiling and all of the pieces are either moving around or flying in and out from our fly gallery.”

All in all, with main characters that defy the stereotype of the leading man and woman, good music and lot’s of dancing, Mezoff says that “audiences will love seeing this show. It’s a classic and is still very accessible today, which is not the case with all Golden Age musicals.”

Tickets for “The Music Man” will be available on October 22, 2016.  The performances will be showcased at the Staples High School auditorium on Nov. 11, 12, 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 13 and 18 at 3:00 p.m.