Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC Climbs Every Mountain at Benedum Center

Sitting at opening night of Pittsburgh CLO's The Sound of Music, I was teased by an Old Acquaintance across the aisle. "Are you excited for this one?" he asked, knowing full well that I count The Sound of Music among my least favorite musicals. Yes, the songs are great, yes, it's a Christmas classic for some inexplicable reason, but I still find my soul leaving my body whenever I hear about "climbing every mountain, fording every stream" or the clock in the hall going "cuc-koo, cuc-koo." Maybe it's my Montessori school upbringing (ruler slaps would have been mild compared to what I got), but I have almost as much of a distaste for the nuns in Act 1 as I do for the Nazis in Act 2. And yet, despite my cynicism and jaded outlook, Marc Robin's production of The Sound of Music made me feel things. It even, God help us all, made me smile.

If you don't know the plot of The Sound of Music, that's on you, not me. "A reluctant nun-to-be and a reluctant Nazi-to-be fall in love, quit their jobs and go mountain climbing with the help of seven kids and a confirmed-bachelor uncle." There, you're caught up. But the real reason that I can afford to be so flippantly dismissive summarizing the show is that I don't have to. This is one of the most famous musicals of all time, despite appearing rather rarely on Broadway, and we all know why.

That movie, with that actress.

You can't talk about The Sound of Music without talking about the movie adaptation. It's futile, because I don't think there's any other musical OR movie musical that looms as large in the worldwide mass consciousness as the Julie Andrews/Christopher Plummer film version. It's singlehandedly driven the Austrian tourist trade for fifty years. It's been a television rerun staple at Christmas for nearly as long. It is, even for me who doesn't like it, a nearly perfect movie. The voices, the cinematography, the almost overwhelming Technicolor: memories are made of these. It's such a titanic film, both in success and in its cinematographic scale, that it can make the stage show feel a little claustrophobic by comparison. There are things you can do onscreen that you can't do onstage (touring the entirety of Austria, for one). Most productions of this musical make you miss that big Hollywood production, and I'll admit to missing it at times. But while Marc Robin's production does wisely draw from the film version for inspiration from time to time, he also differs from it in the ways that really matter. To wit: Marc Robin's The Sound of Music is actually funny. 

The best thing about Hanley Smith, starring as Maria, is how thoroughly she is NOT Julie Andrews. Because you can't be Julie Andrews; the legendary stage and screen actress has an affect so fey and otherworldly but oddly sensual that you can almost believe her Maria is the same supernatural being as Mary Poppins. Hanley Smith runs in the opposite direction, with a charmingly impulsive, endearingly awkward Maria that feels entirely modern but never anachronistic. It's easy to imagine why the Captain falls in love with her, because after spending ten minutes with Hanley Smith, the audience is in love with her the same way. Can you imagine getting a drink or wanting to dance with Julie Andrews? It's like wanting to dance with Queen Elizabeth II. Hanley, however, is delightfully human, with a beautiful voice that soars like Andrews but without the iciness. 

Her other half is gamefully played by Will Ray, who shows us a younger, softer Captain Georg. He hasn't been entirely militarized yet, and from the first time we meet him, we can see the cracks in his facade waiting to burst open. It's a romance that's easier to root for here than in the film; Andrews and Plummer often feel like Beauty and the Beast, but there's a warmer will-they-won't-they here. Ray is also the best singer I've ever seen play the Captain. Not merely an actor who sings but a beautifully expressive baritone-tenor, his "Edelweiss" had several audience members around me in tears. Ray and Smith are well-balanced by their comic foils Max (Blake Hammond) and Elsa (Katie Sina). Neither one plays their characters as archly as is often the style; there's a warmth to them both that underlies their appeasement politics, so we as an audience struggle how to feel about them as much as the Captain does. They're also great comic actors and singers with fantastic timing and back-and-forth chemsitry; in the best way, they both feel as if they stepped out of a vintage screwball comedy. And while Max might be amoral, it's hard to feel complete disgust for him with historic hindsight; given that the script lightly implies Max is gay, he obviously sees doing minor government work for the Party as his one lifeline to avoid extermination (shades of Cabaret).

The kids are great too; I don't mean to slight these performers just because "So Long Farewell" and "The Lonely Goatherd" typically make me pray for death. Maddie Dick and Sam Greene shine the most in the featured youth roles as Liesl and Rolf. There's a seriousness but a comedy to them in Robin's production that makes these stock characters pop in a way they usually don't. Dick's Liesl is a little bit strange and distant, the "old beyond her years/no seratonin left" type, rather than a typical coquettish ingenue. Greene's Rolf is similarly a bit looser and dorkier, the sort of boy next door that feels realistically boyish and not quite as Hollywood-poised. He's a charming lost soul, the kind of guy it's easy to see falling in with the alt-right even today. 

Robin's production has trimmed down the epic length of The Sound of Music with neat snips here and there, though the full show still runs three hours. There is also always the question (like Grease) of whether or not to use the movie songs, and Robin and the CLO have wisely opted to license and use them here. Hanley Smith sounds great singing "I Have Confidence," which might as well be the manic-pixie-dream-girl anthem, and she and Ray make a charming duet on "Something Good," which has become a standard for a very good reason. (It also replaces the rather dirgelike and dull "An Ordinary Couple," probably the worst song in the Rodgers and Hammerstein library, so kudos to Robin for making the choice to replace it.)

There are things in the film that it's hard not to feel are missing, like he puppet show or the ultimate revenge of the nuns on the Nazis by sabotage. At the same time, you're limited (if not by the licensing companies only allowing so much massaging of the script) by the confines of the stage itself: you can't have a car chase or an actual mountain climbing scene. Luckily, the scenic design by Kenneth Foy and projections by Brad Peterson make up for a lot of this: what appears to be a painted backdrop of a mountain scene gradually moves, with drifting clouds, sunrises and sunsets. It feels organic in a way that few projected or LED sets do.

My praise for this production is sincere: I do not like The Sound of Music in the abstract, but I thoroughly enjoyed this production. And I don't want to undersell how hard that barrier is to clear, because it's HARD. I'm a guy who writes oddball fringy musicals about zombies, conspiracy theories, the impossiblity of mutual monogamous love, and the shadiness of the funeral industrial complex. I do NOT do raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens. And yet... and yet I would gladly see this production again, and I've told equally cynical friends to rush out and see it as well. It's not just good, it's timely: with the rise of totalitarianism again across the entire globe, the "no way to stop it" versus "which side are you on" feels fresh again, the way productions of Cabaret have become de riguer in the last few years. Rodgers and Hammerstein may have been writing family entertainment, but they don't sugarcoat the truth of what's at stake, and Captain Von Trapp singing "Edelweiss" feels like the videos we all saw last year of Ukrainians singing in national solidarity against Russia. Climb every mountain, indeed.

 

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