How to solve a problem like casting Maria
Producers and directors taking on The Sound of Music know that success or failure rests, largely, on the casting of Maria. Of course, you have to find a Mother Abbess who will blow everyone away with her rendition of Climb Every Mountain. You need a dashing Captain von Trapp whom we all want to see rescued from grief and repression into laughter and song. And yes, you need a precociously talented ensemble of children, a lovably roguish Herr Detweiler and more.
Above all, however, you need to solve the problem of Maria.
She may recede from centre stage about two-thirds of the way into the show, shifting her role from that of unsubmissive, irrepressible nun to dutiful wife and mother — and then geopolitical events overtake the story, as Austria caves to the Nazis in the dreaded Anschluss — but Maria sets the tone of any production.
Too much like Julie Andrews and it can feel like an attempt to reproduce the 1965 film version that gave the musical its lasting fame; too much like anything else and audiences can feel short-changed because Andrews is their point of reference for the character.
Every now and then, a Maria comes along who reshapes the role, musically or theatrically. When it happens, with the right supporting cast and strong direction, the result is a landmark production. This is very much the case with the Pieter Toerien and Cape Town Opera collaboration that, having completed a sold-out run at Artscape, opens this week in Johannesburg.
Like a few other works in the Rodgers and Hammerstein oeuvre, The Sound of Music lends itself to an opera/musical crossover — just ask Janelle Visagie, who started her career at Cape Town Opera and has toured internationally with Love Boat while juggling Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and is something of a specialist Mother Abbess (I defy you not to cry a little when she sings in this production). Still, the part of Maria is not an obvious vehicle for a classically trained soprano.
Brittany Smith has in recent years emerged as the face and voice of Cape Town Opera through a series of acclaimed performances. She has the chops for any big part, of that there is no doubt. Perhaps it should be no surprise that Smith’s Maria delights all who see her; nevertheless, though her talents are well-known, audiences and critics continue to describe her as a revelation in the role.
This kind of success usually raises another Maria problem that needs solving. How do you cast an understudy who is not, by comparison, underwhelming? Director Steven Stead faces no such conundrum — on the contrary, his Maria problem is an embarrassment of riches.
The performance I watched featured Leah Mari, the production’s “alternate” Maria, and I have no hesitation in declaring: a star is born.
Mari is simply superb as her near namesake. Her Maria is by turns witty, bumbling, naive, forthright and, ultimately, commands all around her through sheer force of creative spirit. Vocally she is thrilling, comically she is sharp, and she sustains the poignance that the role also demands without lapsing into sentimentality.
The opera/musical balance is on display among the male leads too: stage musical veteran Craig Urbani is a dapper and earnest Captain von Trapp, offset by celebrated baritone William Berger as a winsome, amoral Max Detweiler, who finds that, in the end, he cares too much about his friends to be entirely narcissistic. These two make a fine trio with Nadia Beukes as Baroness Schraeder for the memorable number (cut from the film version) No Way to Stop It, arguing over the merits of neutrality and selfserving opportunism in the face of a moral crisis.
This was a dilemma that life under the Third Reich made crystal clear, but that each of us faces in one form or another in the present moment of perpetual local and global crisis.
The Sound of Music may offer a cliché story of redemptive love and kindness, but it also acknowledges that love and kindness are only enough to save some — not all — when brute violence and hatred take over a society.
’The Sound of Music’ is at the Teatro at Montecasino from January 27 to February 25.