Monday, October 06, 2003

The Hills are Alive


So, how was The Sound of Music? I seem to hear you say. Well....
A wee bit on the disappointing side, if you want the complete truth. Sure, it was a professional show with fancy scenery, full pit orchestra, professional performers, etc. etc. But still in all, something about it was not quite right. The performance seemed very perfunctory. The whole thing was a bit rushed. It seemed very "we have to hurry up and do this thing so we can eat at 5:30 and be back in time for the 8pm show". Disappointing. The sound was over amplified to the point of hurt when twelve nuns started belting out a very Americanized, ungraceful Gregorian chant in that Broadway kind of way. Captain von Trapp's clothing seemed to come from Men's Warehouse, rather than being anything particularly Austrian, or period. Granted, we were a fur-ways from the stage, so I could be wrong...but I don't think so. Maria came off as a dingbat. In a newspaper interview she said she felt Maria was much more playful, and prankish than Julie Andrews version 1.0. She went so far as to say Julie Andrews was far too "stodgy". I'm not getting into the Julie Andrews debate (lest my Grandfather Tuna returns from beyond to lecture me on how Julie Andrews was the greatest performer ever), but I will say that "stodgy" is one word I'd never use to describe her. What these performers seemed to forget was the time period. Yes, I'll accept playful and prankish (to a point), but folks, the show takes place in 1938. Times were different then, and, particularly if you were a woman, you couldn't act and speak to others the way you do now. It made no sense that the Captain would ever even like her. All that was missing was a wink-wink nudge-nudge and an inane giggle or two. It just didn't work. Baroness Elsa von Schrader sang the best, and the kids were ok, (except I think Friedrich must have been about 25, so it was kind of creepy). Greatest revelation in the program? Mother Abbess was in Law and Order! I wish I had my program, because I really want to know who she was. I'm guessing the body in the alley.

Best unintentional humors in the show:

1. At the end of the wedding scene, Maria, Captain and crew dash offstage for an excessively quick costume change. Bring on the nuns who enjoy the singing of really loud, joyful Latin wedding music (too loud -- it hurt). At the end, the lesser nuns exited, Stage Right. Mother Abbess stays onstage, and takes several steps forward. For the life of me, GramTuna and I cannot figure out what she's doing. She is sort of looking heavenward, but her hands don't say praying. Maybe she is just having a one-on-one with the big guy to round out the music. As the orchestra finishes, (louder, louder, final chord, applause!) Mother Abbess puts her arms out. They aren't stretched way out in the dramatic Celine-Dion heart thumping last note kind of way. It's more an elbows bent, arms halfway out kind of pose, which, from where we're sitting, looks even funnier. And she is kind of waving her arms in small up and down motions in a "more applause -- more applause -- c'mon, give me more!" kind of way. GramTuna and I cracked up for the next five minutes. We had, and still have no clue.

2. At the end of the show. Nazi's gone, off they go to escape over the mountains. Bye nuns. See ya. Thanks for covering our butts. As the nuns "Ahhhh" themselves through the last strains of "Climb Every Mountain" the family takes off, Stage left. As the last ear-splitting (I'm telling you, this sucker was LOUD) chords sound, the lighting changes so the backdrop is now clear. The family is frozen in a final mountain climbing scene type pose. Except. The mountain is this rather smallish raised platform with Astroturf and a couple of small fake rocks. So, rather than looking like they are scaling the alps, from our vantage point, they look like they are inexplicably on a raft and they have joined the cast of "Big River", floating down the Mississippi with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. All it really needed was the Mother Abbess to do her Fonzie "Aaaayyyyyyy" impersonation again, and it would have been a classic.

As it was, TinyTuna enjoyed the performance, which was the most important thing. Not surprisingly, she said she liked "hers" better. In many ways, so did we. While it was nice to see families bringing their children to the theatre in dressy clothes, I hope all those parents who brought two and three year olds get hit by a clue bus, and fast. The same goes for the parents who thought it was ok to get up in the middle of the performance to get their kid a snack. This isn't the movie theatres, folks. And finally, for excessively crinkly paper lady who must have eaten six or seven bags of individually wrapped candy in the row behind us -- even my nine year old said it was bad manners. So there.

Elsewhere, in the world of music. My boss brings me an article this morning. It's a CD review actually, of the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra. I kid you not. Don't believe me. My boyfriend Google will tell you all about it, here. So the next time you tell someone to "blow it out your zucchini" ... well, you tell them where to go as well. Grab yourself a river raft and head on down the Mississippi until you come to Austria. And that, my friend, ain't no Veggie Tale.

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