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The Theatreguide.London Review
The Sound of Music
Palladium November 2006 - February
2009
First of all, let me say that it's great. Go see it.
Second, the confession that being able to say that is a pleasant surprise.
It is not that I had any doubts about the quality of the show, or of Rodgers and Hammerstein's songs.
But generations have grown up on repeated viewings of the film and endless recyclings of the songs, and over-familiarity can breed an undeserved contempt. (A cinema in London offers regular Rocky Horror-style sing- and camp-along showings.)
But the fact is that the show is good and the songs are good, and one of the virtues of this revival is that it somehow encourages you to listen to them as if for the first time.
Push past the fact that you've heard it a million times, and recognise that the title song is one of Richard Rodgers' richest melodies - set to a love song, it could have been another Some Enchanted Evening.
Forget that every child of five can sing My Favorite Things, and discover that Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics are not just a random list, but carefully chosen and very evocative images. Give up your natural instinct to resist the bouncy appeal of Do Re Mi, and enjoy its irresistibility.
(The score includes two songs Richard Rodgers wrote for the film – the uninteresting I Have Confidence In Me and the lovely and thoroughly Hammerstein-ish Something Good.)
As everyone knows, this revival's Maria was chosen through a Pop Idol-style television competition, and the winner, Connie Fisher, proves just about perfect in the role. (A side note: it's nice to know that most of the TV losers have found work in various musicals around Britain.)
As TV fans know, Fisher twinkles. Twinkles unceasingly. Twinkles exhaustingly. Perhaps in time she'll discover that varying the level of her perkiness can be dramatically effective.
But a twinkly Maria works just fine, and though occasionally (most notably in the title song) the power of her voice seems more a product of amplification and enhancement than her native talent, she bounces her way more than adequately through the songs and navigates the brief bits of acting the script demands.
Stepping into the role only a week before the opening, Alexander Hanson is a warm (perhaps too quickly defrosted) and attractive Captain von Trapp. As the mother superior Lesley Garrett and the sound engineer fill the house with a soaring Climb Every Mountain.
The children are all delightful in the slightly sinister, inhumanly perfect way of stage children, though Sophie Bould as Liesl looks and plays a lot closer to 30 than 16-going-on-17, and seems so out of place among the others that you might mistake her for the governess.
The production is sometimes elephantine, as the Palladium and its audience almost demand. Maria is first met perched precariously on what looks like a cliff face, though the hills are alive enough to rotate to a safer angle so she can get down.
The nuns seem to have taken over a medium-sized cathedral, and the von Trapp drawing room features a three-storey staircase that offers a full aerobic workout to those who have to run up and down it repeatedly.
Director Jeremy Sams still manages to keep things moving, though Arlene Phillips' contribution, aside from a ballroom scene, seems more a matter of lining up the children in varying ways than full choreography.
The driving force behind this revival is Andrew Lloyd Webber wearing his producer's hat. ALW has never hidden his admiration for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and by reminding us that The Sound of Music is one of the great shows of Broadway's greatest musical team, this revival stands as a thoroughly successful salute by one major theatre composer to his predecessors.
It is also a great night out, both for the dedicated lover of musicals and the once-a-year theatregoer.
Gerald
Berkowitz
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