Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Five stars
The hills are very much alive in and around Pitlochry just now, as a new wind blows in care of artistic director Alan Cumming. As a parting shot from the still fresh looking old order spearheaded by former artistic head Elizabeth Newman, Sam Hardie’s seasonal revival of Newman’s final show from this time last year similarly goes out on a high. It also shows how great work can create stars. This comes here in the form of Kirsty Findlay, who returns to the role of runaway nun Maria with the same youthful brio and vocal prowess that sees her apply a maturity and understated energy from start to finish in this just shy of three-hour show.
Findlay is helped, of course, by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II's superlative showtunes, which she and a twenty-two strong, all singing, all dancing cast that doubles up as a mini orchestra bring to life with unabashed gusto under musical director Richard Reeday.
The show itself remains a wonder, with Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse’s book drawing from the real Maria’s memoir of how she transformed herself from unruly novice to governess of an uptight Austrian sea captain’s brood of seven children. This led to the von Trapp Family Singers becoming a smash hit on the Austrian concert circuit. Maria and the now less uptight Captain even got themselves hitched.
This is proper fairytale feelgood stuff, as the first half of the play highlights through a series of routines between Maria and Ali Watt’s deadpan von Trapp. It is there as well in the effervescent presence of the nuns, led by Kate Milner Evans’ kindly Mother Abbess. The children too change Maria’s world, with Lauren MacDonald’s teen in a hurry, Liesl, at the fore.
As this is 1938 Austria, however, what should have made for a simple happy ending is just the sucker punch to Nazi Germany’s annexation of the country and enforced sieg heiling allegiance to the cause or else. This is where things get really interesting, with Maria’s free spirited penchant for progressive education and love of singing likely to see her and the von Trapps consigned to the deviant art bin and worse unless they head for the hills.
For all the joys of The Sound of Music, then, Hardie’s production isn’t shy of highlighting the dangers of an authoritarian ideology that demonises those who don’t goosestep into line. Liberation for Maria and the Von Trapps comes through the sort of music the new puritans of the Third Reich would see cancelled. The Sound of Music remains an epic counterblast to such intolerance.
Ends
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