Hugh Jackman Will Star in "The Music Man" on Broadway

March 12, 2019

Is it October 2020 yet?


Playbill
just announced
that next year, a revival of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man will hit the Great White Way, starring everyone’s favorite Hollywood/Broadway song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman as the show’s titular charming con man Harold Hill. Given Jackman’s star turn as razzle-dazzle impresario P.T. Barnum in last year’s The Greatest Showman (aka all we could talk about here at DS for basically all of last winter), this is such an obvious casting choice that we’re low-key embarrassed we didn’t think of it ourselves.

I mean, check out the super-smooth moves on Wolverine.

This revival (the first on Broadway since the 2000 production that Susan Stroman directed and choreographed) will reunite the major players that made the recent Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! such a delightful slice of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Americana: Jerry Zaks will direct, and Warren Carlyle (currently putting the moves on Kiss, Me Kate) will choreograph.

No other casting has yet been announced, so that means we can do plenty of speculating about who we think should fill the uber-dancy roles available in River City, IA. Being cast in this production carries serious a-star-is-born potential: Travis Wall, Clyde Alves, Tiler Peck, and Cameron Adams all appeared in the last revival as teens, and have obviously since gone on to #major careers.

Our picks as of now for the choreo-heavy roles of teenage sweethearts Tommy Djilas and Zaneeta Shinn? We’d love to see the ballet-to-Broadway trend continue with New York City Ballet corps de ballet standout Andres Zuniga as Tommy…

…and American Ballet Theatre corps de ballet star Zimmi Coker as Zaneeta!

The production will start previews September 9, 2020 at a to-be-announced Shubert theatre on Broadway, with opening night set for October 22.