Friday 3 March 2000

A satisfying revival of 'The Sound of Music' enriches the colors that often get washed out of this much-loved musical.

The feeling of being truly Von Trapped -which you tend to get in heavily sugared productions of "The Sound of Music"- is nowhere to be felt in director Susan H. Schulman's classy, satisfying revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's final team effort, one of the more durable American products of 1959.

It's no "Gypsy," of course, to name that year's finest musical. But "Gypsy" didn't have the uplift. It didn't have the nuns. It didn't climb every mountain.

Continuing through Sunday at the Pantages, the "Sound of Music" revival stars Richard Chamberlain as Capt. Georg von Trapp, and Meg Tolin (Chamberlain's co-star in the "My Fair Lady" revival) as the guitar-toting postulant Maria Rainer, who can turn the world on with her smile, who can take a troubled date -1938- and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.

The material hasn't been re-conceived in radical terms. "The Sound of Music" couldn't handle it. Yet, by playing a mighty familiar story for full emotional value, by easing in and out of the songs, director Schulman makes it all flow.

Schulman and scenic designer Heidi Ettinger, who collaborated so fruitfully on "The Secret Garden," have fashioned a physical production both imposing and subtle. The muted palette of the mountains, Nonnberg Abbey and (initially) the widower Capt. Von Trapp's palatial mountainside home pays off in dramatic terms. Slowly, the palette widens, by way of flowers, Catherine Zuber's pleasing costumes and -frighteningly- each new Nazi armband or banner.

Chamberlain's light but pleasing baritone sounds nice, on "Edelweiss" in particular. He tends to narrate the role rather than actually inhabit it. Overall he's more effective in Act 1; the later, love-struck passages feel forced, and his strangely '70s haircut suggests a secret desire to be considered for the role of Rolf, the young juvenile. Chamberlain has plenty of natural authority. The role needs more of it.

Tolin's Maria buoys the whole show. She's plucky without pushing it, and often very funny. As her romantic rival, the Viennese millionairess Elsa, Rachel de Benedet is pure 1938 Continental swank, stylized to the nth degree. (She's on a Norma Shearer scholarship, apparently.) Even smallish roles such as Rolf (Ben Sheaffer) or the butler, Franz (Tad Ingram), make their mark.

At the moment, Los Angeles is hosting two very different collections of Catholic show tunes, the lighter batch here, the heavier batch in "Martin Guerre" over at the Ahmanson. Thanks largely to the inescapable 1965 movie version, "The Sound of Music" means a great deal to huge numbers of people. Perhaps the best measurement of this revival's many virtues, however, belongs to the won-over skeptics. During intermission Wednesday night, one man said: "I'm enjoying it. I didn't expect to, but I am." Score one for the Von Trapps.

© 2000 Michael Phillips