'Music Man' bones up in N.Y.
Cast comes out swinging
Talk of a Broadway curtain call doesn’t often dominate the opening-night party. But Susan Stroman’s extraordinary coda to the new "Music Man" revival, starring Craig Bierko, had Glenn Close, Helen Hunt, Hank Azaria, Dr. Ruth Westheimer and much of the Marriott ballroom abuzz on Thursday night.
The director choreographed her cast to come out at show’s end to perform a swing version of "Seventy-Six Trombones" -- on the trombone!
"The entire cast had trombone practice every day at 4 o'clock for the past month," Stroman revealed.
Not that she didn’t have her doubts along the way. "The trombone turned out to be more difficult to learn than I thought, and after week two I feared it might not work. After week three, the cast actually started to make music."
