Slipping into The Sound of Music
Toss the cynicism and revel in this classic story about following your dreams, says director of the NAC musical
When Jillian Keiley, artistic director of National Arts Centre English Theatre, decided this season’s Christmas show would be Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, more than one theatre fan grimaced.
The story about the famous singing von Trapp family is, after all, practically a cliché of popular culture, thanks mostly to the blockbuster 1965 film of the same name starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.
Andrews, you’ll remember, plays the spirited nun-turned-governess Maria who works for, and later marries, Captain von Trapp (Plummer in the film), stern pater familias to seven children.
When the Nazis invade their native Austria, the entire family barely escapes to Switzerland.
The story, based on a true one, is heartwarming, and the songs, Do-Re-Mi and My Favorite Things among them, finely constructed earworms of the first order.
Turns out that Keiley’s decision was a shrewd one: the run featuring the NAC’s own theatre company has been twice extended (it now goes from Dec. 3 to Jan. 4) in response to surging ticket sales.
As for those grimaces, they just may turn into smiles, according to the show’s director Joey Tremblay.
“We live in such an era of cynicism; we will not tolerate any kind of romantic notions about following your dreams,” he says. “So I said, ‘Let’s take this story for what it is and get beyond the cliché.’ You have to find the big heart in it, and it’s actually really freeing.
“Songs like Sixteen Going on Seventeen are about such innocence. I think it’s something we’re so longing for.”
Based on ticket sales, we’re clearly also longing to see the stage version of the story which debuted in 1959 with Mary Martin as Maria and, despite winning several Tonys and enjoying long runs on Broadway and elsewhere, has never before been part of the NAC English Theatre season.
Ottawa’s Orpheus Musical Theatre Society has mounted the show four times, the first in 1967-68.
Despite the paucity of stage performances here, the singalong Sound of Music — a film phenomenon that erupted in the late 1990s and finds audiences, dressed as nuns or lonely goatherds, singing and yodelling as lyrics flash on the bottom of the movie screen — has swept up numerous Ottawa audiences over the past dozen years.
Keiley and company originally planned to do the musical in singalong style by passing out lyric sheets. The idea was scratched when they realized that not every audience member wants to sing about dog bites and bee stings. Still, says Tremblay, “If the audience feels its hearts are so full they have to sing, then great.”
Tremblay, who originally knew the story only through the film version, was surprised when he read the script for the musical to discover how strongly political it is. Not only does Captain von Trapp resist the Nazis, but Maria resists convention by leaving a settled environment, the convent, and following her heart. “That’s really going against the narrative of the time, the 1950s,” he says.
Eliza-Jane Scott, who plays Maria in the NAC production, says being influenced by Andrew’s depiction of the character is almost inevitable. However, the character has to grow over the course of the story, and that gives an actress the chance to find her own Maria.
At the beginning, says Scott, “She’s a pain in the ass and she’s all about herself. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to bring to it,’ that and her own sense of humour and immaturity. If we dial into that immaturity at the beginning, then we have somewhere to go.”
The Sound of Music was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final collaboration, and Scott says one reason the show remains so popular is the sheer power of its melodies.
Tremblay says that the show showcases the songwriting duo at the top of their game. Add the irresistible hopefulness of the von Trapp story and, he says, “If you’re coming to the show with your arms crossed and going, ‘Why am I doing this?’, then so be it. But I have the feeling you’re