THE SOUND OF MUSIC (Zoom production)***

 

By Imogen

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyOTYl7CNe8

Available until: Unknown

This is a Zoom production of The Sound of Music by four ‘theatre kids’. They all obviously have some musical and dramatic training and one of them in particular is exceptional but there are numerous technical issues throughout like an inability to sing in unison with each other and with the backing track which sounded out of tune anyway but being in unison is a real issue on Zoom which a lot of professionals have had problems with and the backing track might be a Zoom issue too. The problems are understandable considering the limitations of technology but if this kind of thing makes you want to tear your hair extensions out and they’re the type that’s difficult to put back in maybe you should watch Carrie Underwood’s Sound of Music instead.

I think the actors really like The Sound of Music, they did try to give a good performance but I do think sometimes they weren’t professional enough in their attitude. There was a bit of corpsing and ad libbing which did not seem appropriate like “Let’s go to Vegas babe” but maybe some people would find this funny. There were also songs from Grease. I don’t approve of this even though I love Grease, I think they should show respect for the musicals they’re in by not singing songs from better musicals. I am also not impressed that one of them said they speak French in Austria, I asked Megan if that was true and she said the official language is German and that is what I thought too. French is not even one of the other recognised languages. Megan is only little but she knows lots of weird facts like that.

The star of the show is Julia Ribas who plays Maria, Liesel and a couple of other roles. She is beautiful and she has an exceptional voice. The tone is sweet and judging from the Grease songs she snuck in she also has great versatility. She can hit all the notes and carry a tune easily and I thought her acting was perfect for the role. Her performance is very sincere and she is able to give a more profound acting performance than Carrie Underwood and is much more natural and normal than Julie Andrews who I think turns Maria into an affected snob. Jack says it takes one to know one but Jack will say anything to upset me and I refuse to be upset by someone who still grades his bodily emissions out of 10.

Jacob Cherry plays Captain von Trapp, Rolf, the Reverend Mother and others. I think he is a very gorgeous Captain von Trapp, he has a sort of suave swagger about him which I really like, more boys should learn to do that. Jacob has an attractive and warm voice but because of the technological difficulties he was often singing almost a cappella and this is not a skill he finds easy. He made lots of accidental modulations. This is a shame as I think he could have sung it properly but his voice still sounded nice. He would have been a lovely Rolf too but the blond wig put me off a bit and Rolf is a bit of a twit anyway. He’s one of those annoying boys who think girls need looking after. I’m surprised Liesel puts up with it. The only way girls need looking after is when the boys pay for our meals and hold door open and remember anniversaries though I usually get fed up with my boyfriends before we get to anniversaries.

I didn’t like Jacob as the Reverend Mother so much or Jake Goldfarb when he was playing a nun. Some boys think that when they’re playing women they need to do a squeaky falsetto and exaggerate everything and it all looks very silly. If it’s not a drag show don’t treat it like a drag show. Treat the role with the same respect as you do to your male roles and then your performance will be much better and your audience will be more invested. I do think nuns are a bit weird because they don’t have boyfriends so they must have a very boring life (I know they’re all supposed to share Jesus but necrophiliac menage a lotses don’t really do it for me) but I don’t think they’re really that shallow.

The other roles were played by Jake Goldfarb and Rachel Stubington. Jake looks very nice and although he didn’t have any of the best roles he got on with everything really well and did some nice characterisation and he didn’t try to upstage the stars. Theatre needs more people like him.

Rachel played all the children except Liesel and she did a very good job at making them all different. She even changed her hairstyle when she was moving between roles and that is very impressive. I think she would be very good at handling complicated props onstage. She is also very good at accents and she delivers text very well.

All the actors were very good at having conversations with themselves when they played two characters in a scene. This can look silly but they took it seriously and the scene between Captain von Trapp and Rolf was very dramatic. I didn’t know it was possible to make a scene dramatic when one person is wearing a silly blond wig but Jacob did really well.

The end is a little bit scrappy but The Sound of Music doesn’t have the best ending anyway.

This isn’t a perfect Zoom production but if you want to see a talented Maria or just see people having a really good time putting on a show they love and actually being productive in lockdown you could do a lot worse than watch this.