They Look Happy to Meet Us

The Sound of Music at the Paper Mill Playhouse

            The principal feeling upon exiting Paper Mill Playhouse’s new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s exuberant masterpiece The Sound of Music is relief, but it would be fair to say that it is mixed almost evenly with revelation.

            The Sound of Music is, of course, perfect, and this production is, in kind, perfect.  Most productions of the musical have two faults—one being that the actress portraying the lead, Maria von Trapp the singing governess, is not nor will ever be Dame Julie Andrews.  The other—and this is nearly irrefutable—is that children cannot act.        
            Thankfully, Paper Mill overcomes these constant aesthete’s tribulations with the greatest of ease, casting as Maria the lanky, energetic, and appropriately tomboyish Elena Shaddow, who, while not (sadly) being Dame Julie Andrews, is equipped with an altogether different set of tools, which go excellently to work on the Paper Mill’s mammoth stage.  She can sing, act, and dance without any misguided assumptions about the character or any lighthearted but unnecessary ebullience.  She goes at the part with a satisfied and admirable determination, joyously and with the power and stage presence of a (dare I say it?) Dame Julie Andrews.

            As for the other issue, the von Trapp children (respectively, Chelsea Morgan Stock, Sean McManus, Amanda Harris, Hunter A. Kovacs, Maya Fortgang, Gracie Beardsley, and Greta Clark) can—glory be—act!  Such rapturous magic is at work on the stage that one could break down and weep!  Here is a musical to make you believe in God!—or in such a vein were my thoughts upon their entrance.  So rare is it in musical theater to find a child with actual dynamic ability that these von Trapps are ones to make your hair stand on end.

            And truthfully, I thank whatever power oversees musical providence (or casting agents Tesley and Company—whoever reads this first) that someone is doing The Sound of Music justice, because that is exactly what it deserves.  In the halls of musical history, Rodgers and Hammerstein stand alone, and The Sound of Music stands alone in their works.  It is a musical bordering on the divine.  The libretto, music, and lyrics are all equally sublime (no surprise it later won the Tony for Best Musical and, as a film, the Academy Award for Best Picture).

            It is a constant reminder, however, that nine months after its Broadway premiere, Oscar Hammerstein died of cancer, breaking up a composing duo legendary in the annals of the Jewish-American Broadway mogul.  It is fair to say that when he is mourned, a part of his fans’ dismay is that he and Richard Rodgers would never write another Sound of Music, let alone another Oklahoma! or South Pacific.  When Hammerstein died, the final true testament to his lyrical brilliance in conjunction with Rodgers’ light, lilting, altogether cheery music was this ingenious contribution to American cultural history.  Rodgers wrote other musicals later in his life, with other contributors (Do I Hear a Waltz? with Stephen Sondheim, Rex with Sheldon Harnick), but they were never the same.  They didn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as songs like “Edelweiss,” that could be played over and over again and never become mind-numbing.  The gist of it is that they weren’t perfect.

            But we can get down on our knees with the nuns of Nonnberg Abbey that a theater with as noble a tradition as the Paper Mill Playhouse is performing this magnum opus.  We should all feel lucky that, though today we are void of comparable geniuses, we can enjoy perfection from the past written by those who have long left us behind.