The Sound of Music @ Roleystone

I saw last night's performance of this perennially popular R&H piece, as did an almost full house of other enthusiastic punters. While the template is slavishly adhered to as usual, there are a number of quite unusual aspects to this production. First, the set consists of an open horseshoe stage, flanked by panels upon which are painted the various scene settings in a gallery-like arrangement. As the scenes change, the panel representing the appropriate setting is lit up in a very effective way. Secondly, the characters do not really fit the usual 'type-moulds'. This may have to do with the pool from which the cast was drawn. Clearly, singing ability was put before physical appearance in several cases - which is as it should be in 'community' theatre. Thirdly, the musical accompaniment consisted of a single pianist instead of the usual lush orchestration. While this did seem to detract a bit from the play's potential, at least it was live music and not a recording!-) There were numerous highlights, particularly the children and the nuns chorus numbers and despite the fact that there didn't seem to be a lot of 'chemistry' between the two leads, there was many a misty eye in the house at the romantic bits. Finally, while the scene changes were relatively simple, they seemed to take an inordinately long time and make a lot of noise. To me, this means 'not enough stage crew on hand'. This is hard to fathom, given the large number of walk-on 'extras' who could have been helping out backstage when not involved in the show, but there may besome other explanation for that. Well done, all!