The Music Man, by Meredith Willson

What makes commercial theater commercial is the way it delivers the reassuringly familiar, and Chanhassen’s current revival of The Music Man does not disappoint. The audience for this show expects to see a stage version of the movie version of the original Broadway musical, so that’s what director Michael Brindisi and his cohorts have put onstage. This is not a bad thing. It may feel a bit like visiting a wax museum, but once you get past that aspect of it you can hardly fail to enjoy yourself, because this is a highly professional mounting of one of the best musicals ever written. The songs especially, even after all these years, remain incomparably brilliant, growing organically out of the story in ways that no other musical can match. Keith Rice, who looks a little like Jim Carrey and sounds almost exactly like Robert Preston, turns in a strong, high-energy performance as the title swindler. Other standouts include James Cada and Katherine Ferrand as the mayor and his artsy wife. And you’ll never see a better staging of the famous opening scene—the one in which a gaggle of traveling salesmen aboard a train chant a patter song.