Just announced!
Tickets are on sale now for the Urbana Park District’s Youth Summer Theatre production of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. You can purchase them at the Phillips Recreation Center, 505 W. Stoughton, Urbana, or call (217) 367-1544 and use a credit card.
Popular on Broadway and made famous by the 1962 movie starring Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, and Ronnie Howard, this musical will leave you humming its well-known tunes and putting a little march in your step. Members of the Urbana Pops Orchestra will perform the music for this classic, which is fun, funny, and filled with charm, romance, and plans gone awry.
The story, you ask? Despite the fact that he can’t tell a tuba from a timpani, fast-talking traveling salesman Harold Hill cons the people of River City, Iowa into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band he vows to organize. His plans to skip town with the cash are foiled when he falls for Marian the librarian, who transforms him into a respectable citizen by curtain’s fall.
This award-winning and critically acclaimed Broadway classic is an all-American institution, thanks to its charmingly predictable dramatic situations, and one-of-a-kind, nostalgic score of rousing marches, barbershop quartets, and sentimental ballads which have become popular standards.
The production will be directed by Kyle A. Thomas, a newcomer to the Urbana Park District Youth Summer Theatre.
The cast includes children ages eight to 18 from throughout the area. Children have been rehearsing since the first week of June; many are there four nights a week.
“Expect to have a great time at the show,” Thomas added. “We are having a lot of fun as we get ready, and that will be reflected in the performances.”
Tickets: $14 for Adults, $10 for students/seniors, $7 for children 12 and under.
Performances dates/times are Thursday through Saturday, July 25–27, at 7:30 p.m. A matinee performance will conclude the run on Sunday, July 28, at 2:00 p.m. Performances will be held at Urbana High School Theatre, 1002 S. Race Street in Urbana.