‘Music Man’ infectious in its jubilance

Nevada Conservatory Theatre's "The Music Man" has a playfulness that comes at you in waves.

Director Michael Barakiva and cast -- a skilled blend of union performers, students and community actors -- have taken what is perhaps America's greatest musical (and America's most American musical) and turned it into an evening of near nonstop fun.

Meredith Wilson (one of the few solo authors to ever successfully write book, music and lyrics) somehow gets at the soul of this country with a simple story about the infamous Harold Hill, a traveling salesman who in 1912 cons a small Iowa town into forming a band -- even though he knows nothing about music. The score ranges from "train rap," to moving ballads and big Broadway production numbers.

Barakiva's main contribution is that he doesn't over-respect the material. You never get the feeling you're watching a stale classic. There's a self-mocking giddiness beneath these characters that makes the script alive and new.

The director has assembled the broadest range of talent in the six-year history of Nevada Conservatory Theatre.

I'd say you're likely to particularly notice the elegance and lilting soprano-ing of union actress Terri Bibb as the salesman's reluctant love interest, Marian the librarian; Edward Cotton, Dale Robertson, Stuart Smith and John Slocum, who make up a hilarious and smooth barbershop quartet; the scene-stealing Gail Romero as a gossiping mayor's wife who rallies against the smut of Chaucer; that diminutive bullet of eccentricity Sheri Brewer as the librarian's wholesome mother, desperate to find her daughter a man; and a singing and dancing ensemble -- greatly aided by Mimi Quillin's inventive choreography -- that seems to be having the time of their lives.

In the main role, union actor Patrick Ryan Sullivan is a competent song-and-dance man, but I'm not sure he has the overflowing charisma to convince us that his traveling salesman has the ability to seduce an entire town. His relationship with Marian carries no spark. Because of that lack of chemistry, Bibb isn't able to dramatize her character's huge change of heart.

The production could still use a bit more energy, particularly in the second act. And the final sequence is too rushed for us to appreciate the clever plot twist.

But the show's jubilance is so often infectious that you want to jump on the stage and join in. It says to the audience, "Be happy. Life is good."

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.