THE HILLS ARE ALIVE: Review of The Sound of Music Live

NBC’s advertising of The Sound of Music Live claims that no network has attempted a live broadcast of a musical in fifty years.

No wonder.  If one has videotape to edit, use it.
 
The live broadcast of 5 December 2013, coming a few hours after the announcement of the death of Nelson Mandela, originated from a large converted warehouse space in Bethpage, New York.   It puts me in mind of another memorable live TV musical production – the CBS live broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella starring Julie Andrews, directed by Ralph Nelson.   On 31 March 1957, CBS broadcast this nationwide from a converted old Broadway theater, a very tight space in which all the cast had to work around stagehands and big color cameras in choreographed rotations.  It was also an early color TV broadcast, available only in those markets that had a CBS station with color transmitters.  Unfortunately, CBS made no arrangements for a color kinescope; color videotape was not available in 1957.  Fortunately, a black and white kinescope preserved the event; even today, the broadcast looks like a nerve-wracking experience for everyone in front of cameras and behind.

I will say this for The Sound of Music Live.   It had remarkably few bloopers or problems.  I only noticed
1 someone’s off stage image appearing where it should not

and  2 a camera focusing on live TV.   None one froze or passed out or projectile vomited on live TV.  I bet it was tempting, though.   The production’s most noticeable problem was star Carrie Underwood, who portrayed a very pretty, talented but dull “Maria Rainer.”

“Problem” is probably the wrong word.  Carrie looked a treat, and she was closer to the right age for the role than was the original Maria Mary Martin, who was in her 40s in the first 1959 Broadway production.  She sings beautifully, but she could not connect to the rest of the cast.    However, her lack of acting ability certainly gave the right impression about the character Maria —  an inexperience young woman from a convent school.  

The rest of the Broadway-trained cast did much better with their roles.    They are also used to any problems that will happen in a live performance, so if anything went wrong with them, I certainly did not notice it.   The kids who portrayed the former Navy captain’s family did well all the way around.  

One aspect impressed me strongly in this production:  it got back to the thematic roots of the 1959 production.  The 1965 movie, which aimed for the biggest audience possible, removed or de-emphasized some of the themes that Oscar Hammerstein, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse explored in the play.

The Sound of Music originally examined two themes –

1 the survival of the artistic ego against the controlling vindictive, dictatorial ego  

and 2  the competition between the spiritual aspect of music and the commercial exploitation of music.    It is true that the commercialization of music got the Von Trapp family out of the coliseum and out of Salzburg;  it is the spiritual aspect of music that gave them the courage to flee into the mountains and out of the long night of Nazism. 

The theme of ego response to the dictatorial controlling ego has in the play version a rather interesting illustration in a support character named “Rolf.”

Rolf is a clean-cut superrace boy who delivers ominous telegrams to the Von Trapp estate.    He is, as the song puts it, “17 going on 18" years of age, and in this TV version gets performed by someone really close to that age.   In the beginning of the play, he likes girls to the extent that he likes the oldest Von Trapp daughter, Liesl.  They get what is called on Broadway the secondary ingenue love song set against the forest set.    They even get to role down a grassy flowery incline together.  Romantic by NBC standards.

The next time he appears to deliver a telegram, he has brought two other male Oesterreich Hitlerjugend playmates with him.  They all wear lederhosen. Rolf obviously is more interested in them than in any girl.  The third time he shows up, he portrays a downright surly attitude to Liesl; the Nazi cause is his only interest.   In the last scene, he lets the family escape, so by the standards of Broadway 1959, he is still interested in Liesl, but not enough to escape with them.   He and his boyfriends must have made beautiful cannon fodder. 

How different conditions are on Broadway 2013 vs. 1959.  It occurred to me that the modern stage director could use the forest setting nowadays to symbolize Maria’s spirituality [singing “The Sound of Music” at the beginning] and to symbolize Liesl’s young love [singing "16 going on 17"], and to symbolize the Von Trapp’s escape to freedom at the finale, and to illustrate the predatory egos of the male Oesterreich  Hitlerjugend.   They could have been discovered running through the forest, kicking up the edelweiss and marking their territories urinating on Maria’s tree. 

It seems inconceivable, considering that the actress who played Elsa has such talent to play the witty, ironic worldly girlfriend, that the Captain preferred Maria to her.   In what world??  However, the play makes clear, as the film did not, that she and Georg and Max all had political differences that effected their relationships.   Elsa and Max willingly let controlling egos dictated to them.   Georg would not. 

I heard years ago the first Broadway cast audio recording album of The Sound of Music songs, so I knew what the original finale sounded like.    The memory of that recording did nothing to prepare me for the power of that ending, what with the symbolism of both the Triumph of the Artistic Ego and the glorification of the spiritual aspect of music.   I was reduced to tears. 

The Sound of Music Live was not as horrible as it could have been.   Still, it made me long for the good old days of videotape editing.