“Robert Preston is Harold Hill and will always be, but he wasn’t a dancer,” says light-on-his-feet Matt Loehr, who starred in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s production of “Crazy For You” two seasons ago, winning a Carbonell Award for his tap-happy performance.

Loehr returned last season as Cornelius Hackl in the Maltz’s “Hello, Dolly!,” and he is back again as the flim-flamming traveling salesman out to con the good people of River City, Iowa, in the title role of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.”

He reunites with “Crazy For You” director Mark Martino and choreographer Shea Sullivan, who say that what interested them was the chance to work again with Loehr and to emphasize dance as a key storytelling element in the show.

“What’s different about this music man is he dances us down the street. And there’s something really fun about that,” says Martino. “We’re still giving you Meredith Willson’s vision, which is a relatively unsentimental valentine — that’s what he called it — to a lost era.

“I don’t have enough ego to say I have a take on ‘The Music Man’ that’s brand new,” concedes the director. “What I have is a cast that’s new to it and a way to bring new excitement to the show with a leading man who’s not out of the Robert Preston mold.”

Get ready for a Harold Hill who is a perpetual motion machine. “He’s on the go. He’s a smooth talker, smooth mover, quick-witted,” explains Loehr. “He’s a scalawag. He’s ethically questionable of course, but we love him anyway. That is a tall order, a challenge to pull off.”

Dance has a way of making Harold more likeable, says Sullivan. “It makes perfect sense to me that the music man moves this town through dance and movement.”

In addition to “Crazy for You,” Martino’s shows at the Maltz have included “La Cage aux Folles,” “The Boy Friend” and last season’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” Still, he says, there is something special about tackling “The Music Man.”

“Well, it plays into my wheelhouse, which is to take a classic musical, look at it again to make sure we find the heart and soul of it,” he says. “Also the thing about this show that calls to me is that this is a show where every character onstage changes. That’s very satisfying to a director. It’s a show with flash and with pizzazz, but it’s also so grounded.”

While Loehr feels this will be a “Music Man” unlike any the Maltz audience has ever seen before, he adds that it is not a drastic re-invention of the show. “We’re not out to re-invent the wheel, not setting it in a different time period. You can’t set ‘Music Man’ in the present day, because all (the townsfolk) would have to do is Google ‘Harold Hill.’ It needs to be in a time when there’s no background checks.”

In fact, “The Music Man” is set in 1912, exactly 100 years ago. “It’s the end of an era, an America that doesn’t exist anymore,” says Martino. “That is reason enough to visit it.”

Outre’s “Wild” debut … While the Maltz Jupiter Theatre is celebrating its 10th anniversary this season, Outre Theatre Company makes its debut this weekend in Boca Raton’s Mizner Park.

“We originally wanted to be in Broward County, but Avi Hoffman put us on to the Mizner space and we got a very favorable rental on it,” says artistic director Skye Whitcomb, who teaches literature by day at the American Heritage School in Plantation. “I had no idea that the theater was here, probably many people don’t. The idea is to keep the space busy, so audiences discover that it is here.”

Certainly the company is kicking off with an attention-getting show — the regional premiere of Andrew Lippa’s 2000 musical, “The Wild Party,” based on a 1928 Jazz-era narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March about a vaudeville couple, their tempestuous, violent relationship and the bathtub gin-fueled party one of then throws, hoping to humiliate the other.

“’The Wild Party’ is exactly the type of show that we want to do,” explains Whitcomb. “It’s outrageous. A bit like ‘Chicago’ and ‘Cabaret,’ dark in tone and sexy and fun.”

He hopes to populate Outre’s season with local emerging talent. “We want to showcase the underutilized talent in the area, performers you may have already seen in smaller roles, given a chance to show what they can do with a more substantial part.”

Even though Palm Beach County has lost a couple of major stage organizations in recent seasons, Whitcomb knows the area still has a lot of competition for theatergoer’s entertainment dollar. “This show is going to be amazing. Our job now is making sure that enough people see it.”