ABOUT THE MUSICAL

After seeing a German movie on the Trapp family, Mary Martin thought the material would make a good play for her. Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse of Life with Father fame would write the script which would use music from the Trapp repertoire. But one more song was needed; Martin turned to her friends Rodgers and Hammerstein who thought the material would make a better musical than a play. Thus The Sound of Music was born.

Coming after a string of disappointing Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals (Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, and Flower Drum Song) The Sound of Music, with its wonderfully tuneful score, was a welcomed and huge success despite mixed reviews that criticized the book – the only one in his collaboration with Rodgers that Hammerstein did not author or co-author – as overly sentimental. To some, the musical was more conventional than the groundbreaking Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals of the 1940’s: Oklahoma, Carousel, Allegro, and South Pacific. Still, it had a long run. Sadly, it was the last musical the team wrote; Hammerstein died nine months after it opened. Over the years The Sound of Music has proven to be the most popular of their nine shows – after all, who can resist singing nuns and applecheeked children? And then there’s the movie; one of the most successful ever made. The movie has now achieved cult status. Audiences arrive at screenings dressed as nuns or female deer or “some of my favorite things” to sing along with Julie Andrews and company.

The Sound of Music ends dramatically as the Trapp family, climbing every mountain and fording every stream, makes its way over the Alps to escape the Nazis. But if truth be told, the family boarded a train to Italy on its way to America.

Richard Gidez for SCCT