Jones, son tour in The Music Man

Actress-singer Shirley Jones returns to The Music Man, but not as prim librarian Marian Paroo, the role she played in the 1962 film.

At age 80, she admits that'd be a bit of a stretch, both for her and for the audience.

For The Music Man in Concert, which wraps up a nationwide tour this weekend at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, Jones is yielding that role to Teri Bibb. She will be playing her own mother, more or less -- Mrs. Paroo -- and will also be the host and storyteller, sharing her experiences from the making of the film.

The show, a slightly condensed version of Meredith Willson's musical, will be onstage at 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. It'll kick off the 2014-15 season for Celebrity Attractions, which, like the Arkansas Symphony and Ballet Arkansas, is moving its operations to the Maumelle High School venue for two seasons while Robinson Center Music Hall is undergoing major renovations. The production will also feature the Maumelle High choir and marching band; the tour hires local musicians in each city to play Meredith Willson's score.

Jones' son, Patrick Cassidy, with whom she was pregnant during the filming of the movie (that's reportedly one of the experiences she'll share onstage), plays the other lead role, quasi-musical con man Professor Harold Hill.

"It was Patrick's original idea," Jones says. "Patrick and I have done The Music Man, the entire show, three or four times -- we did it in Sacramento and we did it in Connecticut -- but we have a wonderful director that we've worked with before. And then the director, Glenn Casale, and Patrick decided that a concert version, if we could get it together, would be great, and that's how it got started.

"It gives me the opportunity also, besides playing Mrs. Paroo, I'm telling stories about how The Music Man came to be, the association with Robert Preston, with Meredith Willson, so I'm hosting the show as well.

"When I do my concerts [as she did with the Arkansas Symphony in a 1993 pops concert], I tell stories about all the movies I've done, [including] Oklahoma! and Carousel and even Elmer Gantry, but not lengthy ones like this. This is just Music Man time.

"One of the wonderful things is incredible photographs above the stage, that no audience has ever seen before, and they're beautiful."

Cassidy fused Willson's script and songs with his mother's recollections to create the concert adaptation.

"It started after we had done the production in Sacramento," he says. "I went into my hotel room and I thought, 'We can elaborate on this idea of my mother's perspective and incorporate it into the show.' It's kind of a hybrid of the show and a concert put together."

The process involved cutting some scenes -- the one on the train that starts the show was one of the casualties -- and some of the secondary characters, Cassidy says.

"It's not the show; it's a concert version of Shirley Jones' perspective on The Music Man, with a lot of the show in context," he explains. "It's not just excerpts; the story is still connected, but then we're getting her perspective on different moments and different scenarios during the course of filming, both on camera and behind the scenes."

In each city on the tour, the 12-actor touring company hires a local youngster to play Winthrop Paroo. (Corbin Pitts, 8, a third-grader at North Little Rock's Lakewood Elementary, will be doing the honors here.)

Cassidy appeared in a production of the show in high school nearly a quarter of a century ago.

"I was going to show a clip of the 1980 production, but we edited it out of the show," he says. "But it's actually a great story.

"My senior year in high school, I went to Beverly Hills High -- yes, 90210. I was the quarterback of the football team; two games into the season I was leading the nation in passing. In the third game, which was our home opener, I broke my collarbone. And in the interim of healing I found out the drama department was doing The Music Man for the spring musical.

"I figured, 'I'm a shoo-in for Harold Hill; my mother played Marian in the movie,' and I even was fortunate enough to get Dick Van Dyke, who was playing Harold Hill in the national tour, to teach me 'Trouble in River City.'

"I went in for the audition with my cane and my hat and I sang my heart out and I got cast as 'Salesman No. 5.' They cast Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme's son to play Harold Hill."

But, he says, the experience restructured his career ambition. "I got taken with the whole audition process, and it was my first taste of the theater and to be in musicals. And I knew that someday I would play Harold Hill, and here I am."

His perspective on playing Hill is certainly colored by Preston, who originated the role on Broadway and played the character in the movie; "it's colored by my father, Jack Cassidy; and it's colored by me and my interpretation of who he is and what kind of salesman he is. I think he's a combination of a lot of the men who have been influences in my life."

Jones says it's much easier, vocally, to play Mrs. Paroo than her daughter. "And I love the role," she says. "The old Irish lady is fun to play. She's a real character, and I get a lot of laughs -- Marian doesn't get many laughs. And I get to work with Patrick, and we like working together."

Was there any risk that Jones at any point might slip back into Marian, even for a second?

"We have an incredible Marian; she has an unbelievable voice and she's brilliant in the part, so it's great to have her," she says. "I thought about that until I heard her sing, and I thought, 'Uh oh, I could never sing like that again.'"

The tour opened Sept. 18 in Mason City, Iowa, which Willson supposedly used as his model for the city where the show is set. (A complete list of tour stops is available online at ShirleyJonesMusicMan.com.)

Celebrity Attractions CEO Ed L. Payton said in announcing the show in February that intense negotiations with the producer made it possible to end the tour here.

"I told him we would love to kick off our season with this show -- start off our Maumelle season with a bang, something unique, a star-studded event," he said. "He worked with us, [booking] Little Rock first, and worked backward from there."

Style on 09/30/2014