The Sound of Music: The Sweetest Sounds
Paramount Theatre,
through December 16
Running Time: 2 hrs, 40 min
Looked at on paper, music hardly seems formidable: a bunch of inky squiggles and scratches across a page; rows of spots, like black ants, marching through miniscule cages. Released from those cages, however, translated into sound by the human voice or a musical instrument, those marks acquire a power that can alter lives. Notes cascade in rhythm, becoming melodies, melding into harmonies, and in some ineffable way, it all coheres into something that is able to free the soul, to liberate it from the cares of the world and bring it closer to nature, to the divine, to lost truths.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II paid tribute to this in The Sound of Music, their final collaboration. As its heroine Maria progresses from irrepressible young novice to spunky governess to wife and mother, music is the means through which she and the other characters make vital connections. For Maria’s fellow nuns, it is a way to God, the medium for their praise. For Maria, it’s a lens through which to see the natural world and a means to bond with her new charges, the von Trapp children. For the widowed and lonely Captain von Trapp, it is the force that awakens his heart to the love of his children.
In this production, Austin Musical Theatre proves itself really, well, in tune with this aspect of the show. The company delivers Rodgers & Hammerstein’s familiar songs with an ear for not just their beguiling tunefulness but their dramatic impact. The morning hymn sung by the nuns has a richness of sound and of reverence that brings home to us the spiritual calling of these women, which in turn heightens our understanding of the conflict within Maria: to serve God in the abbey or in the world. The songs with the von Trapp children — oh, what a disarming brood they are here, from Krystin Hicks’ lovely, lovestruck Leisl right down to Meghan Lowenfield’s adorable Gretl — are so bright with joy and youthful exuberance that each is, like the line they sing, a drop of golden sun; we can see how their shining song is able to pierce the shadows surrounding their father’s grief-stricken heart. And when that happens, the moment is enriched by the response of Captain von Trapp; Mark Jacoby, whose Captain boasts a splendid dignity laced with melancholy, lets us see the music reaching him and the icy crust of reserve frozen over him for so long melting away, like the surface of an Alpine lake in springtime. The ways in which music’s power makes itself heard again and again in this production may be its most distinctive aspect.
That’s not to suggest that the show’s other elements are lacking. Scenic designer Christopher McCollum provides yet another amazingly inventive series of sets, transporting us to abbey chapels and Austrian manors of breathtaking detail and suggesting those musical hills through a huge light box on which is reproduced a gorgeous engraving of an Austrian mountainside. Tony Tucci’s lighting adds a sunny ambience to the outdoor locales and hushed intimacy to the abbey interiors. Leigh Munro grounds the Mother Abbess in warmth and sympathy, and Lauren Hathaway creates an appealing Maria, brimming with a childlike innocence and delight that conveys how she connects with the younger von Trapps; she’s the favorite aunt you could always talk to as a kid. Directors Scott Thompson and Richard Byron have crafted another musical jewel.
There may be a few off notes — a refined but somewhat predatory Baroness (Paty Lombard), a Max (Barry Pearl) who comes off as more contemporary American than Thirties Austrian, choreography in “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” that feels disconnected from the song — but nothing is so discordant as to detract from the show’s sweet music: the sheer fun of “The Lonely Goatherd,” the heavenly majesty of the choral wedding processional, the wistful ache of Jacoby’s “Edelweiss.”
Because that music is so sweet, it seems especially fitting to pay special tribute here to musical director Fred Barton. This key player in the AMT team has contributed mightily to almost every show by this company, but what makes his work here so noteworthy is that it communicates just what the sound of music is, how it moves us, changes us. To see him silhouetted in the pit, crisply conducting the orchestra and singers, is to know his superior craftsmanship. To hear the music they make is to know his artistry — and to feel music as a liberating force.
This article appears in December 7 • 2001.