{"id":1983280,"date":"2025-08-27T20:40:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1983280"},"modified":"2025-08-27T20:40:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:40:29","slug":"the-music-man-is-the-latest-triumph-for-the-new-tampa-players-neighborhood-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-music-man-is-the-latest-triumph-for-the-new-tampa-players-neighborhood-news\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Music Man\u2019 Is The Latest Triumph For The New Tampa Players! \u2014 Neighborhood News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I will readily admit that among the dozens of Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals that I saw during my years of living in New York, \u201cThe Music Man\u201d was never one of my favorites. But, I only ever saw the hit 1962 movie starring Robert Preston as the conniving Prof. Harold Hill and Shirley Jones as the lovely librarian\/music teacher Marian Paroo \u2014 although I was in the show\u2019s (barbershop) \u201cQuartet\u201d in my high school\u2019s performance of the classic Tony Award-winning hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I thought the story of Hill, the traveling salesman\/con man, and his duping of a town full of weird and often stupid characters, created by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey, was just too dated and not as much fun as some others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But honestly, to me, the New Tampa Players\u2019 (NTP) production of \u201cThe Music Man\u201d at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center was better than the movie. And apparently, I wasn\u2019t alone. All of the people sitting around Jannah and me raved about the talented cast and their beautiful singing voices, the sets, the costumes and the 15-piece orchestra \u2014 the largest ever for an NTP production \u2014 under the musical direction of the great G. Frank Meekins. I hope director Angel Borths, choreographer Tatiana Eriksen, costume designers Shelley Giles, Heather Cleveland, Travy Stemm and Dave Giles and production manager (and NTP producing artistic director) Nora Paine and the entire cast and crew are proud. This also was the first NTP show I\u2019ve seen with sign language interpreters (photo below)!\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The amazing Melanie Bierweiler was correctly sassy as Marian (and did a fantastic job singing \u201cGoodnight My Someone\u201d and \u201cTill There Was You\u201d) and David Groomes didn\u2019t disappoint in the demanding role of Prof. Hill on \u201cYa Got Trouble,\u201d \u201c76 Trombones\u201d and with Melanie on \u201cTill There Was You.\u201d The \u201cQuartet\u201d of Chase Reeder, Michael Bonassar, Jacey Squires and James Cass hit every note of every song, including on \u201cLida Rose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neil Bleiweiss provided great comic relief as Mayor Shinn and Becky Groomes correctly \u201coveracted\u201d as his zany wife Eulalie. Talented youngsters Nora Duffy as Amaryllis (who sang like a songbird in duet with Melanie on \u201cGoodnight My Someone\u201d) and Luke Adams as Marian\u2019s lisping brother Winthrop (who sang to the back of the theater on \u201cGary, Indiana\u201d) showed that NTP has a bright future ahead. And, Debbie Scourtes brought a lot of verve to the role of Marian\u2019s widowed mother Mrs. Paroo, who is trying to keep her daughter from becoming an old spinster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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You could just hear the audience hissing at the show\u2019s one villain, Charlie Cowell (played to perfection by Stephon Mikell), and Jaden Figueroa and Chloe Tort were great as the young \u201ctroublemaker\u201d Tommy Djilas and Zaneeta Shinn (\u201cYe\u00a0Gawd!\u201d), respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The largest cast I\u2019ve ever seen in an NTP production also included the super-fun and funny Pick-A-Little Ladies (Lena Wigfall, Suzann Humara, Christy Adams and Chelsea Keith), plus nearly 20 \u201censemble\u201d players young and old (including the super adorable extra-young\u2019ns Mars Wolfe Bonassar and Elliott LeFloch).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, I wouldn\u2019t be telling the truth if I didn\u2019t say that Gabriel Martin White as Hill\u2019s buddy and fellow con man Marcellus Washburn was this show\u2019s scene stealer. He got laughs \u2014 calling Hill by his real first name (\u201cGreg\u201d) throughout \u2014 and he brought to mind the young Dick Van Dyke in \u201cMary Poppins\u201d with his expressive face and high-flying, elastic-legged dancing. My pics did him no justice!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Great job, one & all!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Up next for NTP are another classic musical \u2014 \u201cOklahoma\u201d \u2014 in October, and \u201cThe Sponge Bob Musical\u201d (yes, really) in January. Auditions for both shows have already been held (although volunteers to help with both productions are still needed), so look for announcements about when tickets go on sale in these pages and at NewTampaPlayers.org<\/a>. <\/strong>\u2014 GN\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source neighborhoodnewsonline.net \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will readily admit that among the dozens of Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals that I saw during my years of living in New York, \u201cThe Music Man\u201d was never one of my favorites. But, I only ever saw the hit 1962 movie starring Robert Preston as the conniving Prof. Harold Hill and Shirley Jones as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1983281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1983280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\u2018The-Music-Man-Is-The-Latest-Triumph-For-The-New.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}