The tills are alive...

The Sound of Music (London Palladium).

I much enjoyed what is quite good show, although I am not entirely sure that the quality of either the production or the performances will entirely justify the grosses.

Connie was fine, but despite being chosen for her own voice and versatility by the viewers of the TV show, tonight I saw her simply do a bland, slightly Welsh, vocally inferior impression of Julie Andrews.

Lesley Garrett, on the other hand, was excellent - if perhaps looking a little young to be so Superior in the Abbey.

The other cast members were uniformly good. One or two of the middle children were less talented than the more obvious oldest girl and little Liesel; the latter, aged 7 in real life, had a clearer and more tuneful singing voice than several of her "siblings".

The set was impressive, managing to conjure aerial views of the mountains, the altar of the abbey and the interior and exterior of the Von Trapp family home. The best scene however, was the final performance by the Von Trapps at the Music Festival... Ironically, this was the scene in which the designer had least to do. It was set in front of the Palladium's red curtains with swastikas lowered all around the auditorium. Very tastefully done and quite sinister.

The band was pretty big and played very well.

The audience very poorly behaved. I think they were surprised by the length of it, presumably having dozed off during mid-film for each of the last forty Christmases. And old ladies have notoriously small bladders and loud voices when singing along or giving a running commentary ("Is it that Barbra Streisand playing the Mother Superior?" "No, its Leslie Phillips" [sic]).

The biggest criticism, I suppose, is of the director. He was understandably reluctant to let go of the Film which is instantly
recognisable, and infamous of late for being kitsch. There were some amusing nods: Connie, for instance, at the end of the overture inexplicably runs towards the abbey with both hands on head, a la Andrews in the same scene. But surely some of the other scenes could have done with a new angle? Couldn't "I am sixteen" be acted as a more tongue-in-cheek number with the girl fluttering her eyelids to entrap the cocky telegraph boy, rather than simply swooning at him?

They seemed to have cut a lot of dialogue, or something was making it all flow quite clumsily. The goat herd scene appeared entirely out of the blue with no explanation. And in Act II Maria refers to The Abbess as having said "every time God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window"... whereas in fact she had not said that line in the appropriate place in Act I because it was omitted!

Other than for reasons of timing, we can be glad of the cut dialogue because several of the protagonists were incapable of presenting anything remotely believable. If what Maria and the Captain demonstrated when dancing was supposed to be a representation their passionate affection - so strong that it precipitates Maria's immediate departure from the House - then their subsequent sex life must be as chaste as the nuns'.

For me, the biggest incongruity was Baroness Schräder (the wife-to-be of the Captain). She is by far the most amusing, if enigmatic character (much as Miss Gulch in the Wizard of Oz). In the film she is fabulously aloof but you can't present her in this way when you ALSO intend to incorporate her two songs (which don't feature in the movie). "How can love survive" and "No way to stop it" are superb songs in their own right, and in their own way further the plot far more than the naff and endlessly repeated "Do Re Me" or "The Lonely Goatherd". The singing-(stage)- Baroness' numbers not the songs of a frigid and aloof woman, rather the witticisms of someone much more interesting - a blasé socialite, rich Viennese party goer - oblivious to the Nazism so reviled by the Captain as it poses no threat to her own lifestyle. To my mind the director didn't sufficiently consider
the tone of these numbers when recreating the two dimensional villain of the film version.

So there you have it. Quite good. Equally quite disappointing... but only in as much as it could so easily have been improved.

***oo