Review – The Sound of Music

With all the hype surrounding the West End Whingers’ visit to The Sound of Music, it was perhaps inevitable that the paparazzi finally caught up with them last night at the London Palladium. So here at last is a long-awaited picture of the whingers, snapped as they stepped from their limousine.

Anyway, to the show. Without giving too much of the plot away, The Sound of Music revolves around an Austrian rookie nun who gets suspended from the convent for singing too much and is sent to look after the children of a rich military widower just as the country is about to be annexed by Germans.

And do you know what, it’s really not half bad? Once you get used to the fact that it’s not the film and that Connie Fisher isn’t Julie Andrews, it’s pretty good actually. The principals are all fine, the sets are pretty impressive and the songs – of course – are faultless. Although do be prepared for the reintroduction of a couple of Max/Baroness numbers wisely excised from the film version.

But it’s during numbers such as Do-Re-Me that you realise just how much effort went into the film’s set-pieces, and although you wouldn’t really expect them to be able to reproduce them on the stage – bicycles being what they are – you do miss the lushness of the film. Even so, Do-Re-Me is not really half as terrible as this promotional clip makes it look (and note the “hands on head” homage to Julie Andrews).

Particularly impressive are the children. You take for granted the performances of the children in the film; they do, after all, have the luxury of endless takes to get it right, but to have children as young as five singing, speaking and dancing live on the stage is another kettle of fish. The cast we saw (there are three separate casts for the younger six -and four Gretls) were startlingly good.

There are some good set-pieces too. For the scene in which the Von Trapp singers participate at the Salzburg festival as a smokescreen to obfuscate their flight from the Nazis, the theatre is briefly transformed into the festival itself with the help of a few Nazi banners which descend to good effect.What’s missing is the moment when the audience joins in with Edelweiss to create the feeling that the Austrian spirit remains uncrushed. Andrew was particularly miffed, as he was convinced there would be the opportunity to sing along at some point, and it seemed churlish of the producers not to offer it here. As it was, he was forced to remain silently seated, perhaps slightly overdressed in his botanically precise Edelweiss outfit, the result of many months of industrious needlework.

The show also boasts the most convincing Nazis seen on the West End stage all year (c.f. our reviews of Bent and Cabaret), some terrific sets (we applauded the silver birches), one of the season’s best hats (belonging to the Baroness Schraeder) and a role model for all stage housekeepers – Nicola Sloane as Frau Schmidt.

If we had to whinge about it (and we do), our reservations would be:

• Lesley Garrett (CBE) may be able to sing but if she’s not going to do it every night, she might as well act while she’s on. And an Austrian nun with a Doncaster accent?
• Rolf isn’t nearly Aryan enough
• Why does the London Palladium insist on squeezing 2,300 people into its barn of an auditorium through a space as tight as a nun’s vows? Because that’s where the gift shop is, that’s why.

Ticket tip

• West End Whingers emotionally blackmailed eight of their dearest acquaintances into joining them in order to take advantage of the group booking discount which secured them best seats in the stalls for £30 instead of £55.