by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse
Directed by Jeremy Sams
A Mirvish Production at the Princess of Wales Theatre
Opened October 15, 2008

   Though based on true characters and incidents, The Sound of Music has always seemed to me to be pure Broadway hokum--anomalous reality transformed into a quasi-Cinderella story. It is not a musical I normally find endearing because its syrupy content is usually so thickened in performance as to create galloping diabetes in the susceptible. Maria, its heroine, is more often than not played as a Goody Two-Shoes with a cutesy personality, a sparkling smile, a ceaselessly optimistic drive, and a benevolence that would qualify her for immediate sainthood. You feel manipulated from the moment she sends her musical voice soaring above the Alps in the title song, right down to her magical charming of the motherless seven von Trapp children, her melting of their stern widower father’s heart, and the triumphant ending where the singing Von Trapp family wins top prize at the Salzburg Festival and daringly escapes the Nazis by crossing the Alps to freedom. Then there’s the operetta quotient—in the Lindsay-Crouse libretto and even in much of the Rodgers-Hammerstein score—with a jesting impresario friend of the family, singing nuns, adolescent ardour involving the eldest von Trapp daughter and her teenage suitor, and ingratiating music hall numbers. With song titles such as “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “My Favorite Things,” and “Something Good,” there’s enough good will to convert the planet to a whole-heartedly sentimental view of the world. I never thought I would ever like this musical fable, much less accord it a standing ovation. But I stood and cheered—along with the rest of the huge opening night audience—because this is a production that cuts down the sugar calories while serving up an entertainment with a healthy, pulsing heart.

   Jeremy Sams’ production is superlative. Robert Jones’ scenic design paints locales in three dimensions, giving Abbey, Alps, von Trapp villa, and Nazi-overrun Salzburg a stunning super-reality while maintaining a firm link to the mundane. The Alps acquire a real form in a skyscape beautifully lit by Mark Henderson, who seems to have been inspired by German masters of landscape, and the mountain meadow in which Maria gives voice to her lyrical exuberance tilts us into her private world of reverie and escape. Nonnberg Abbey has a somber womblike interior; von Trapp’s villa a spatial flexibility and mutability that encompasses snug bedroom chambers or chandelier-lit ballroom elegance. When the Anschluss happens and the Nazis take sinister control of the Salzburg Festival, the atmosphere changes palpably as a huge Nazi banner floats above the audience and swastikas emblazon boxes and walls.

   But all this scenography would count for far less than it does were the performers not up to scratch. Happily and thrillingly, they are in what has to be quite simply the best version of this musical ever to grace a North American theatre. Despite all the vulgar hoopla over the casting of its Maria—involving the nationally televised “audition” of prospective Marias—the fact is that Vancouver’s Elicia MacKenzie scores significantly in her first major professional role. Never attempting to be as coy as Mary Martin or as divinely operatic as Julie Andrews, she brings a fresh, winning simplicity to the part, showing in the process a comic sense, a firm stage presence, some fine acting chops, and a contralto that, despite some rough lower notes, soars when it counts. She is believable in all of Maria’s stages of development, going from irrepressibly vocal postulant to irresistible governess and then to frightened and confused romantic figure.

   As Captain von Trapp, the decorated naval commander who has shut out music and love from his life, Burke Moses is not as successful. He is meant to be her foil, and he certainly is, with his handsome mien and authoritarian manner, but the role is not well written, and I have never seen any actor deal successfully with the character’s early harsh charmlessness. Moses, however, recovers well enough to show why the captain falls in love with her and not with the Baroness of Blythe Wilson, another instance where the performer cannot fill in stylishly what the role as written forgets to provide. Keith Dinicoll’s Max is a figure drawn indubitably from comic operetta rather than from danger-flecked reality, but his comic exaggeration is balanced by the firmly drawn Frau Scmidt of Brigitte Robinson and the wonderful septet of von Trapp children, led by Megan Nuttall’s romantically aspiring Liesl and ending (though certainly not dwindling in a performative sense) with tiny Mia Van Wyck-Smart’s endearing Gretl. All these kids are believable children, and not the wretched little stage creatures usually dreamed up by Broadway or Hollywood. They score beautifully in their scenes with Maria, and they never overact. Kudos, as well, to Jeff Irving’s Rolf, a youth that is played for his truth rather than for mere stage effect, and to the nuns, topped by Noella Huet’s Mother Abbess—this one with an undeniable French Canadian accent but with a transcendental soprano.

   This is the first stage version where the Nazi threat does not look contrived. It is also the first version where von Trapp’s Austrian antipathy to German fascism counts for anything. In other words, the back-story has a palpable shadow rather than a fleeting effect, and this serves to heighten the humanity of the central characters beyond the usual reaches of musical fables. What is doubly remarkable about this excellent production is that its theatre origins are in London, where it has been a spectacular success, rather than on the Great White Way. A bit of a reversal to the customary theatre fashion, and now given an added twist with Canadian performers. Bravo!

photos: Cylla von Tiedemann

pic 1: Elicia MacKenzie as Maria

pic 2: Noella Huet as the Mother Abbess

pic 3: Maria and the Von Trapp children

pic 4: Jeff Irving as Rolf and Megan Nuttall as Liesl

pic 5: Burke Moses (Captain von Trapp), Blythe Wilson (Baroness), Keith Dinicoll (Max)






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