Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell Are The Mayor and First Lady of ‘The Music Man,’ At Long Last

"It was two years before we were able to go into rehearsal," says Houdyshell

Jefferson Mays (l) as Mayor Shinn and Jayne Houdyshell as Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn Julieta Cervantes

According to the Playbill you’ll find at the Winter Garden Theater these days, Hugh Jackman’s “first brush with The Music Man came as a teenager—in the role of Salesman #2.” But over the years he seems to have applied himself, stayed the course, and soared to the head of the cast.

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Now the erstwhile Boy from Oz is that charm-coated charlatan, Professor Harold Hill, out to bilk gullible Iowans and get them to believe boys’ bands are created if they just think the notes.

Among the first to buy his bogus bill of goods are the Mayor and First Lady of River City, IA., George and Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn. In the current (and third) New York revival of Meredith Willson’s 65-year-old musical, they are played by Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell, two of the five Tony-winning actors surrounding Jackman.

Mays did a deep-dive into the early drafts of The Music Man to figure out the psyche of the man he is playing. “Mayor Shinn has maybe one page of this musical where things are going well for him,” the actor allows. “It just cascades for him, one after another. I think he does have a shady side, but he is—in his fashion—a loving father, who wants the best for his family and feels threatened by this charismatic intruder who has turned his town upside down.

“He’s unlike any character I’ve ever played before in my life. It takes a very smart person to play a dim person, and I’m not sure if I’m smart enough to play Mayor Shinn. He’s just a font of malapropisms. It’s kind of a mental exercise where I try to alter the very structure of my brain before going on stage so I can think Shinn and think in Shinn-isms and think in Shinn-afores.”

Houdyshell, who plays the money that the mayor married, owes much to the outlandish costumes created by Santo Loquasto. She just has to show up to get a laugh—whether she’s George Washington or the Statue of Liberty or a Grecian urn. They’re eight in all. 

“I’ll tell you this: My off-stage show is far busier than my on-stage show,” Houdyshell says. “But it is a privilege to be able to get in and out of those clothes and wigs and wonderful hats every night.

“What I really appreciate about this role is that she has a moving trajectory and transition from the beginning of the musical to the end,” says the actress, “and, just like all the other characters in The Music Man, we’re transformed by the presence of Harold Hill in our community.

“In the case of Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn, I think that the way she is most profoundly changed is that she discovers within herself a creativity and a sense of herself as an artist and a contributor to the community in a cultural and artistic sense of the word. But, also, I think she goes through a pretty magnificent shift in herself in terms of her relationship to her husband and learning how to stand up for herself and her own beliefs. That’s true in any marriage. I think when those kinds of shifts and changes happen, it’s always to the good for both parties involved.”

Broadway’s original Mayor Shinn, David Burns, has the distinction of being one of the few performers to win a Tony for a musical without singing a note. Actually, he does lift his voice in song to welcome “The Wells Fargo Wagon”—and Mays makes the most of that moment: “I join in with the company, even though Shinn is described in the breakdown as a nonsinging, nondancing role, which was a relief to everybody else. The pure joy of singing on stage with a glorious ensemble makes little chemicals explode in my brain.”

Houdyshell confines her musical moments to gatherings of the town gossips, whether to do patriotic tableaus (“Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”) or “modern”-dance rehearsals (“Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little”). “I wouldn’t call it dancing,” she confesses sheepishly. “What I do movement-wise is my character’s idea of dance. Given the fact that there are close to 30 real, serious professional dancers of all ages on stage—no, I don’t consider myself dancing in the show. I never tire of watching the numbers. I stand in the wings and watch them every night.”

Just seeing the show shake loose of the Covid-19 curse is moving for her. “There were a lot of productions on the runway, gearing up to get ready to go into rehearsals when that struck. We were all just put on hold. It was two years, I guess, before we were able to go into rehearsal. I always had a sense that it would happen, when it was timely and safe. When we did go into rehearsal, it was a great sense of relief to have arrived finally at that day when we could all gather in a rehearsal room and start the work. We met in the room for the first time Oct. 25.”

The first season of the Steve Martin-Martin Short Hulu series Only Murders in the Building was Houdyshell’s pandemic employment. “Other than that, I was largely unemployed for about 18 months, like everyone else in our industry. It’s always hard for actors not to work, but I caught up on reading and films, emailed family and friends, stayed safe and healthy as best I could.”

Mays and his wife were on the other coast when life came to a halt. “We only intended to go there for five months, but one thing led to another,” he said. “Then, as we were heading to the airport—literally, to the airport with our bags in the car—it was March 13, and everything went into lockdown, so we just turned around and stayed in Los Angeles for the duration.”

Happily, there was some work there. He snagged some episodic television (Hacks with Jean Smart, a Perry Mason and a series about Julia Child that will air in the spring). Briefly, he served as castle doctor for Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth. “It was the only movie being shot at Warner Bros. There were tumbleweeds tumbling around the soundstages.”

Getting back to a locked-down Broadway was about as bleak and surreal, Mays felt. “It was unlike anything any of us had ever experienced before. I think the closest thing to it was when they had to shutter the theaters in plague-ridden London back 400 years ago. In the last pandemic in 1918, the theaters carried on, which strikes me as rather odd and foolhardy.”

Gamely if gingerly, The Music Man started parading into previews. “We did two weeks of performances without the full company,” Mays noted. “Our marvelous swings came to our rescue. Then, we lost ten days of previews because of the outbreak of Covid in our company.”

When leading lady Sutton Foster was stricken just before Christmas, a swing (a member of the company who understudies several roles), Kathy Voyko, stepped up to the plate as Marion the librarian. Jackman explained to that night’s audience how extraordinary Voyko’s performance was, given that she’d had her first rehearsal as Marion at 1:00 that afternoon, and his tribute was caught on camera.

The star is full of that kind of beau geste, says Mays. “The leadership in this company is extraordinary. He and Sutton are our unofficial father and mother. They take such good care of us, plying us with cupcakes and bagels and lottery tickets. They’ve been lavish in their generosity and keeping up morale backstage and on stage in these difficult times.”

Houdyshell seconds those sentiments. “Both Hugh and Sutton are terribly inspiring to work with,” she insists. “Their work ethic is seemingly tireless and impeccable. He’s very kind and generous to everybody in the company, and he sheds his light with us all. He’s the real deal.”


 

 

 

 

Jefferson Mays and Jayne Houdyshell Are The Mayor and First Lady of ‘The Music Man,’ At Long Last