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music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse,

directed by Jeremy Sams

Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Ian, the Really Useful Theatre Company/David Mirvish, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto

October 15, 2008-January 3, 2010

You know something’s wrong with a production of The Sound of Music when you feel sorry that the Baroness Schraeder decides not to marry Captain von Trapp.  Yet, when Blythe Wilson as the Baroness makes her exit, the single best performer in the show leaves the stage.  The latest revival of the 1959 musical, better known in its 1965 film incarnation starring Julie Andrews, is an expensive-looking but emotionally empty spectacle.  Director Jeremy Sams seems to have spent more time planning how Robert Jones’s mobile stage machinery should move about than helping the actors with their roles.

Here as in Britain co-producer Baron Lloyd Webber had the Julie Andrews role of Maria chosen via the gimmick of a “reality” television contest.  Elicia MacKenzie won.  She has a lovely, pure voice and sings all the classic songs beautifully, but her acting is more enthusiastic than polished and she gives Maria no real character other than a generic flightiness.  MacKenzie, however, is not the problem.  Burke Moses as Captain von Trapp is absolutely wooden.  On stage he constantly seems to be posing as if he were modelling business suits and when he sings he sounds like former US Attorney General John Ashcroft but with less breath control.  He does conveys some rapport with Wilson as the Baroness, but his chemistry with Maria is zero.  The two are supposed to discover they are in love during the “Ländler” in Act 1, but they don’t seem to be able to act and dance at the same time.  In contrast, Wilson creates a greater sense of a complex character in her first five minutes on stage than do MacKenzie or Moses during the entire show.  If the first half lacks passion, the second, even with its Nazis, is devoid of tension.

As one expects, the seven von Trapp children are delightful, but strangely neither Sams nor choreographer Arlene Phillips has thought of anything inventive for them to do.  Musically, the singing of the nuns is consistently beautiful with Noëlla Huet’s performance of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” the highpoint of the evening.  What could make such a popular musical so uninvolving?  As with the cynical calculation behind the stunt casting, one wonders if the producers cared more if the hills were alive with the sound of money than with human drama or emotion.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-10-17.

Photo: Elicia MacKenzie and the von Trapp children. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.