By BRUCE DENNILL
The Sound Of Music / Directed by Steven Stead / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, Johannesburg
It’s a 65-year-old musical with a story set in 1938, and one that’s been staged repeatedly in South Africa, largely because audiences keep asking for it. And the audience reaction to and ticket sales for this latest production of The Sound Of Music suggest that the musical has lost none of its appeal.
This version is a co-production between Pieter Toerien and Cape Town Opera, which slightly changes the feel of the show, as both lead and ensemble roles feature performers whose training is slightly different to that of the musical theatre actors. It’s a happy mix, particularly because The Sound Of Music includes interludes featuring sacred music where the soaring sopranos of the nuns need no help to hit the back wall of the theatre. And Janelle Visagie, as Mother Abbess, blends the more dramatic elements of her role with effortless transitions in her high range. Indeed, her rendition of Climb Ev’ry Mountain at the end of Act One is one of the piece’s highlights.
Craig Urbani returns as Captain Von Trapp, a role he has, like so many in major musicals, played more than once because he is superbly suited to the mix of drollness, charm and singing prowess required of a leading man – as well as, in this case, the gravitas that comes with being a military man intent on denying the wishes of a dictatorial regime. As such, he is the perfect foil for the outstanding Leah Mari, who, as Maria Rainer, is a revelation.
She’s as delightful and bubbly as Julie Andrews, who created the definitive Maria in the Oscar-winning film adaptation of the musical. She sings beautifully, but that is – hopefully – the minimum expectation for a lead role in a musical. But she is also an easy, natural actress sharing tender chemistry with her young charges – the actors playing Captain Von Trapp’s children (of whom Ashley Scott is a standout; a young actress to watch in future) – and possessed of a feistiness that makes her heated exchanges with the Captain and anyone she thinks wants to hurt those she loves completely believable. And there are the gurgling giggles that punctuate many of her scenes, supporting the joy that makes Maria such a force in the story and such an enduring character and archetype in the genre.
Denis Hutchinson’s sets create both space and boundaries with strongly-drawn outlines and backgrounds – and the giant Nazi banners in the second act still have the power to cause an audience’s collective stomach to clench, all these years later.
There is the occasional inconsistency in the sound as the hard-working kids run around and past each other to hit their marks and their mics are muted and brought back, but otherwise, this is a clean, punchy production that showcases a number of performers both new to major productions (many of the younger stars are recent drama school graduates) and new to Johannesburg audiences (the bulk of the cast are Cape Town-based).
