(photo by Seanna Kennedy)
How do You Solve a Problem Like This?
The LOT’s new Sound of Music feels like climbing uphill
by Stuart Munro
@StuartMunroTO
Staircases on mountains. Grapevining nuns. The Lower Ossington’s new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music certainly is an interesting take on a well-loved classic.
Let me start off by saying something controversial – The Sound of Music is not a very good show. When it opened on Broadway in 1959, its simple, perhaps overly-sweet story was met with mixed reviews. Even my mother found it too sentimental when she saw it in London in the 1960s. It’s because of the successful 1965 film version that The Sound of Music has entered our public consciousness as one of the Great Musicals of Our Time. Had the movie not been toned down the way it had, I’m not sure this would have been the case. As a result, any new production must contend with the less-than-perfect book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and attempt to find the real heart of the story buried beneath all those layers of sentimentality.
Sadly, The Lower Ossington Theatre hasn’t accomplished this. It hasn’t even tried. Their newest production, currently running at the Randolph Theatre, is so confused and overworked that no sense of story comes through at all.
