The Sound of Music is still mesmerising six decades on

City Press review: The Sound of Music
Venue: The Teatro, Montecasino in Johannesburg and Artscape Opera House, Artscape Theatre Centre in cape Town
Price: R150 to R500 at computicket.com
Rating: 4/5

Evergreen family favourite The Sound of Music returns and, based on the heaving masses of families at the matinee last weekend, it’s going to be a sellout.

This is a reboot of the 2014 production featuring Carmen Pretorius as Maria and Andre Schwartz as Captain von Trapp. Pretorius, who was “discovered” during the High School Musical reality theatre show, has gone on to become one of the most competent and versatile of our musical theatre stars. Schwartz is a veteran of The Phantom of the Opera, so his credentials aren’t in dispute either.

However, this production is swept away by the seven-strong cast of the Von Trapp children. They are simply spectacular. The rule of the performing arts is never work with children or animals – presumably because they will upstage you. This is what happens here.

Also, for children in the audience it is mesmerising to see someone your age or younger up there on the stage holding their own with the adults – it’s an empowering experience and one that parents should consider exposing their children to.

I attended the show in a group of 15, nine of whom were between the ages of 6 and 10. There wasn’t a peep, a whinge or whine as they sat through what is, with an interval, a show of two and a half hours.

Written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, it is the world’s most popular musical and has in it some of the best-known music on the planet. Just about everyone knows the words to Do-Re-Mi, Climb Every Mountain, The Lonely Goatherd and My Favourite Things. It was first seen on stage in 1959 and it remains as sing-along as it was six decades ago.

As always, the South African production is as good as – if not better than – anything you’ll see on an international stage.

The Sound of Music will run in Johannesburg from 31 March 2018 - 29 April 2018 and in Cape Town from 6 May 2018 - 27 May 2018.

(Photos: Sapa)