Despite its release in 1965, The Sound of Music has maintained its cultural significance in society, even today. Before that, however, came the award-winning 1959 musical of the same name. Over 60 years later, LZHS theater is performing its own rendition of the beloved classic.
The Sound of Music is a timeless story about maintaining passion and courage amidst the tumultuous backdrop of social unrest leading to World War II. The story’s themes continue to find relevance in today’s day and age. For this reason, the movie is a keystone of many people’s childhoods, such as Kyra Keena, playing Maria von Trapp.
“I actually grew up watching the movie, and it was a very key component of my childhood growing up. I always thought that Lisa was a cool character, and Gretel was just like me because I’m the youngest of a very big family. [However,] Maria was always who I wanted to be when I grew up. I was like, ‘I want to be that lady.’ Julie Andrews did such a good job in the movie. She was just the most wonderful Maria. To be able to have that piece of my childhood, and getting to perform it on stage, is so cool,” Keena said.
The musical is a fictional retelling of Maria von Trapp’s 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. The musical follows the story of Maria, a free-spirited Austrian woman sent to take care of the seven-children von Trapp family as she aspires to become a nun. Throughout her time with the von Trapp children, Maria fills the household with warmth and joy as she teaches them a love for music, while also falling in love with the children’s widowed father, Captain von Trapp. This bright period of time is cut short when the Captain receives a commission from Nazi Germany’s navy. Due to the Captain’s opposition to Nazi ideology, he flees his home with Maria and the children, and they attempt to find safety and refuge.
Although most people know the story of The Sound of Music through the movie, there will be a variety of differences when watching the musical.
“The musical is very different from the movie. There’s a lot of differences. Songs happen at different times; there are songs that aren’t in the movie, and those are some of my favorites. However, there’s also lots of little parallels, too, [between the movie and the musical],” Joey Richards, student choreographer and actor for Rolf Gruber, said.
Because the story is “a classic, [and] everyone knows the movie,” according to Richards, the cast and crew of The Sound of Music have put significant effort and dedication into preparation.
Keena says that some cast members, even those that have already gone through years of vocal lessons, have gone through “intense” vocal training to meet the demands of a musical that runs “a little over two hours.” On the production aspect of the musical, hours of research has been done to account for even the smallest of details.
“We had to do a bunch of research on what costumes would be appropriate for the time period, what would fit in each scene and make the costume plot, and then as well as props. […] The first order of research was going back and watching the movie, along with the script,” Joey Meister, student director and actor for Franz, said. “[…] We went along with the script and marked down each thing that we needed for each prop and costume. We would then look up pictures of each costume that we had in mind, write it down, [and] made a Google Sheet, basically, for our costume director [on what was needed for] each scene, when [actors] come, and what they’re gonna wear.”
Because the musical is set in Nazi Germany, the cast and crew also had to do their own research, and make conscientious decisions on how to portray this era of history. One of these major decisions was to use representational flags, without the swastika symbol, in light of local, anti-Semitic events in recent years. To navigate and understand such heavy topics, the school choir, of which many were a part of The Sound of Music cast and crew, traveled to Germany and Austria.
“I was lucky enough to be on this trip. One of the places we went to was the Dachau concentration camp, and in my family, I had several ancestors and family members pass away in Auschwitz, which is a different concentration camp, but they had a very similar story to a lot of people [in Dachau]. Being able to just really get a grip and a grasp of what all of that was really like, it was really, really powerful. I think a lot of people have brought that understanding and emotion to the stage. […] It’s super important to our cast, crew, directors, and everyone that we understand this,” Keena said.
Although the musical’s subject matters can be heavy, the production also aims to bring a story that is “family-focused” and beautifully represents our “childhood classics. “There’s something for everyone,” according to Richards.
“It’s just a really cool show. A lot of the characters are very deep, and have a lot of complexity to them. That’s what makes it so cool to have all of these characters together and be able to watch all of them interact,” Richards said. “It’s a really fun show. It’s emotional; it’s exciting. [It is] definitely worth a watch.”
To purchase tickets for the show, check out this link.
