A FEW OF OUR FAVOURITE THINGS…
Let it be said first of all that Gina Beck is a glorious gamine Maria: sings like a bird and is satisfyingly able to convey in her voice her growing-up : at first edging towards beltingly shouty like any excited teen, then playful without coyness as she gets the seven (unnervingly compliant) children on her side in minutes, then later lets her voice mellow beautifully. Nor will you be disappointed, absolutely not, when Janis Kelly’s twinkling Mother Abbess gives it the full ROH Force Twelve to get us climbing every mountain. We thundered suitably. And yes, the six child performers were immaculate, the tiniest in each ‘team’ having their professional debuts. We are not used to such almost robotic ensemble precision in movement-direction of children these days, and one wonders whether there are still any audience children innocent enough to relate to this cosiness with a governess, not now they have been conditioned by sour-hearted old Roald Dahl and the Harry Potter villains. But hell, this is a classic from 1959, and it’s only at those well-drilled set pieces that modern sensibility balks a bit: the kids scamper properly in between them. And at their head as Liesl, Lauren Conroy is an absolute charmer, as indeed she was in Bath’s Into the Woods: watch that name.
Chichester got teased a bit in the press about this production for its trigger warning may-contain-Nazis, and indeed it does , though only in the last twenty minutes with due Heil-Hitler shock value as the Anschluss bites down on the Von Trapps and the only hope is a nun-assisted flight across the Alps. Some directors might have ramped up the danger a bit earlier, with ominous decor-hints , and more made of the edgy ball scene so as to remind us why all the kitten-whisker sweetness is under threat . But when the banners, swastika armbands and stormtroopers running down the side aisles appear in the second half they have the proper shock value: the enforcement of von Trapp’s collaboration feels real enough when the concert scene ends in the ominous spotlight.
Actually, the press teasing about triggers was a bit unfair, since I suppose it is just possible that some of the audience don’t know the story of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s last, most unashamedly sentimental story about the singing family. Only just possible, though: so I spent much of the first hour of Adam Penford’s magnificently straight production hoping that there’ll be audiences who genuinely don’t know it, because the knottiest problem any director is going to face is overfamiliarity. The whiskers-on-kittens, doh-a-deer and lonely goatherd stuff risks feeling exhausted, numbers worn smooth by seventy years of easy-listening radio and people singing Edelweiss in pub car parks. You almost brace yourself for the famous ones, nicely done though they are. So despite Lizzi Gee’s witty choreography (Liesl and Rolf’s teenage romp in and around the fountain is brilliantly sensitive and athletic too). I found more pleasure in the less repeated songs: the nuns’ choruses, the way the old R & H satirical bite returns when Max and Elsa try to turn Von Trapp to the dark side in “No way to stop it” , and Maria’s lovely rendering of “Something Good” when chemistry fizzes at last between her and the Captain. I had also totally forgotten the sharpness of “How can love survive?”as the venal Max and Emma Williams’ millionairess Elsa mourn the difficulty of romance when couples are not picturesquely “warmed by insolvency”. And I like the way that this production with particular care takes the nuns seriously: the programme piquantly tells me that Mary Martin, the first Broadway Maria, took advice from a real nun about not sending them up.
I got happier and happier as it wore on, and was very taken by Edward Harrison’s von Trapp: notably his is the first significant male singing voice, a whole hour in, when on hearing the children he abandons his bosun’s-whistle-martinet personality in a startling trice. Harrison’s voice is rougher, less ‘trained’ in style, than the women’s , and that actually helps. When asked why he can’t see things Elsa’s way he snaps “Not if you see things THEIR way” with real bite. And when in his country’s shame and ruin , he sings Edelweiss very quietly alone, there’s a proper heart-shake.
Though dammit, outside in the car park afterwards one lady was complaining loudly because they didn’t ask the audience to sing along to Edelweiss. But you can’t blame a theatre for letting in people without souls, can you?
Box office. Cft.org.uk. To 3 September
Rating four.
theatreCat 