The Sound of Music

I must confess on being given this particular assignment my feeling was ‘not another production of The Sound of Music surely by now it has been done to death’. Well on the basis of this production it is certainly still alive and kicking! I was quite prepared to enjoy the production for its singing, acting and staging but in the event I enjoyed the whole evening. It would be easy to write that the piece is trite and hackneyed but that’s just not how it was for me. Knowing the storyline backwards certainly did not stop me enjoying it being retold one more time. The star of the show, perhaps not surprisingly, was Joanna Hoyes (Maria Rainer) who sang beautifully, acted well and was generally a delight all evening. Her hairstyle certainly added to her characterisation although there were occasions when the wardrobe department let her down a little. Mark Coffey-Bainbridge (Captain von Trapp) was very assured in the role and his blossoming romance with Maria was very believable and his interaction with ‘his children’ was most touching. One of the advantages of this particular musical is that there are several opportunities for other characters to take centre stage and these were placed in very capable hands. The duet, Sixteen Going On Seventeen, by Tadek Chmiel (Rolf) and Scarlett Wainwright (Liesl) was quite excellent. Perhaps the vocal performance of the evening was given by Irene Starkie (The Mother Abbess) with her rendition of Climb Ev’ry Mountain the first half closer. No review of The Sound of Music can fail to mention the Von Trapp Children. To comply with Child Protection legislation the company was required to have two teams of children although they may well have chosen to do so in any event. The teams were named Team Von and Team Trapp and so with apologies to Team Von it was Team Trapp whom were performing this evening. Any pretty six year old girl on stage is liable to steal your heart and Clydee Scrimshaw (Gretl) accomplished this feat effortlessly, adorable from start to finish. Much harder to stand out from the crowd were the other children but Rosie Bentham (Brigitta) did just that. She gave a performance of total confidence with excellent characterisation, pace and boundless energy. When you add in her peerless diction it was a performance to savour. By no means the largest part but that made it all the more impressive. Now the pretty well full house gave the cast a tumultuous ovation at the final curtain however it would be remiss not to mention some shortcomings. Overwhelmingly the biggest problem was pace not only the cast picking up cues but more especially some of the stage business and scene changes were interminable. Similarly, sound and lighting cues seems to be rather clumsily handled with, for example, cast personal microphones being turned on late. Some of the staging lacked precision and in particular the grouping of the nuns, who sang beautifully by the way, was at best haphazard. But enough of the negative There was one mystery at the end of the evening. Who was the nun with the divine singing voice and why did we only hear her twice in chorus numbers? ‘The Sound of Music’ runs at Nottingham Arts Theatre from July 2nd to 7th at 7:30pm with matinees on July 6th and 7th at 2:00pm

• Type: admin
• Performance Date: 02/07/2013
• Star rating: 12345