Sound of Music Live!
Jan. 5th, 2014 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnSo it turns out that the easiest way of motivating myself to do household chores / cleaning up, which I pretty much loathe, is to put on music really loudly in the background. And then scaramouche told me that they had not cut Max and the Baroness's song in the recent NBC production of the Sound of Music Live! and then J, when informed of the same, sent me a clip. I blame you both!
Because it turns out that I have FEELINGS about this production. They are both good and bad feelings, but mostly it just turns out that I love the Sound of Music very very much and that I would be willing to watch it and love it even if they cast Carrie Underwood as Maria. ...wait. Anyway, I loved it a lot. Because SOUND OF MUSIC. (hrrrrmph. It appears not to be available on NBC anymore, so I cannot link you.)
So I think the biggest problem with the production was that it couldn't figure out whether it wanted to be a stage musical or a TV production. I mean, it was produced as a stage musical! ...except for the parts that weren't!... and for the first half an hour I thought all the actors were really terrible, and then I realized that the projecting their voices and turning their heads so they were always facing front and so on were actually because they were good stage actors, not terrible TV actors.
The other biggest problem was, unfortunately, Carrie Underwood. I mean, any actress in this part was going to have a problem going up against Julie Andrews, but even with that factored in, Underwood just was not up to it. The thing is, her body/face acting is not bad at all! And her singing is nice too! But her voice acting is... nonexistent. It always comes off like she's dutifully reading a script (or singing a script, when she's singing -- the whole thing with musical songs is that you have to sell the plot in the songs, and she just doesn't do that). And when you're being compared to Julie Andrews, who is the queen of voice acting, it's not so good. Heck, when you're being compared to our local acting company, it's not so good! I mean, fairly early on I just wanted her to shut her mouth and look pretty for the camera.
Also, this is a secondary effect, but everyone else at least tried to do quasi-European accents, except for her, and it was really jarring to hear an extremely American-country accent coming out of her mouth. It might have been on purpose, to set off Maria from the other more sophisticated people? But... no. That was never going to work.
I actually liked Stephen Moyer as Captain von Trapp quite a bit. His singing is underwhelming (Edelweiss was not as showstopping as it's supposed to be). And he's no Christopher Plummer, it's true. But that worked in his favor, for me -- his interpretation is very different. Plummer's Captain is arrogant and very sure of himself and his attractiveness, almost smug. Moyer's Captain is arrogant as all get out too -- but he's also much geekier than Plummer (uh, yeah, maybe it's clear why I like him). And he's a broken man, a man who hides behind whistles as a coping mechanism which is clearly not quite working for him. I found the scene where he starts singing with his children, and then talks to Maria, extremely affecting (it may have helped that Underwood had very few lines in that scene), and I thought he did a good job of portraying how he changes -- but he's still the same person, he still has trouble communicating, he's still abrupt even though he's connecting more with his kids.
I also thought Moyer was fairly convincing in the Maria love scenes, although a) it happens really really abruptly, so we as viewers didn't have a whole lot to hang it on, and b) oh man, Underwood gave him nothing to work with there. Also I may have teared up when he stops singing in Edelweiss and Maria steps in to help him out; I found that scene much more affecting than the parallel scene in the movie. Anyway, I very much enjoyed seeing this alternate interpretation.
I don't have much to say about Audra McDonald as the Abbess, Laura Benanti as the Baroness, or Christian Borle as Max, except that I love them all, they were all just as completely awesome as I would have expected, and I thought it was worth it just to watch them. And the scene where Moyer and Benanti are talking and Underwood interrupts them... you know it's bad when I'm all "Maria! Go away and let the grownups talk!" (Personally, I think Benanti would have made a MUCH better Maria.)
I surprisingly liked Rolfe (Michael Campayno) a lot, because I am a total sucker for tenors, even though "16 going on 17" was, um, very poorly directed, as if they wanted us to think as poorly of him as possible.
Let's see... what else? The play is rather different from the movie, more so than I was expecting (okay, fine, I was expecting no differences). The Baroness is rather nicer than in the movie version; although I am kind of in love with evil!movie!Baroness, I rather like this one too because Benanti sells it so well. Rolfe gets saved at the end!!!! (I did not know this and it was a total shock to me.)
scaramouche told me that they had not cut Max and the Baroness's song in the recent NBC production of the Sound of Music Live! and then J, when informed of the same, sent me a clip. I blame you both!Because it turns out that I have FEELINGS about this production. They are both good and bad feelings, but mostly it just turns out that I love the Sound of Music very very much and that I would be willing to watch it and love it even if they cast Carrie Underwood as Maria. ...wait. Anyway, I loved it a lot. Because SOUND OF MUSIC. (hrrrrmph. It appears not to be available on NBC anymore, so I cannot link you.)
So I think the biggest problem with the production was that it couldn't figure out whether it wanted to be a stage musical or a TV production. I mean, it was produced as a stage musical! ...except for the parts that weren't!... and for the first half an hour I thought all the actors were really terrible, and then I realized that the projecting their voices and turning their heads so they were always facing front and so on were actually because they were good stage actors, not terrible TV actors.
The other biggest problem was, unfortunately, Carrie Underwood. I mean, any actress in this part was going to have a problem going up against Julie Andrews, but even with that factored in, Underwood just was not up to it. The thing is, her body/face acting is not bad at all! And her singing is nice too! But her voice acting is... nonexistent. It always comes off like she's dutifully reading a script (or singing a script, when she's singing -- the whole thing with musical songs is that you have to sell the plot in the songs, and she just doesn't do that). And when you're being compared to Julie Andrews, who is the queen of voice acting, it's not so good. Heck, when you're being compared to our local acting company, it's not so good! I mean, fairly early on I just wanted her to shut her mouth and look pretty for the camera.
Also, this is a secondary effect, but everyone else at least tried to do quasi-European accents, except for her, and it was really jarring to hear an extremely American-country accent coming out of her mouth. It might have been on purpose, to set off Maria from the other more sophisticated people? But... no. That was never going to work.
I actually liked Stephen Moyer as Captain von Trapp quite a bit. His singing is underwhelming (Edelweiss was not as showstopping as it's supposed to be). And he's no Christopher Plummer, it's true. But that worked in his favor, for me -- his interpretation is very different. Plummer's Captain is arrogant and very sure of himself and his attractiveness, almost smug. Moyer's Captain is arrogant as all get out too -- but he's also much geekier than Plummer (uh, yeah, maybe it's clear why I like him). And he's a broken man, a man who hides behind whistles as a coping mechanism which is clearly not quite working for him. I found the scene where he starts singing with his children, and then talks to Maria, extremely affecting (it may have helped that Underwood had very few lines in that scene), and I thought he did a good job of portraying how he changes -- but he's still the same person, he still has trouble communicating, he's still abrupt even though he's connecting more with his kids.
I also thought Moyer was fairly convincing in the Maria love scenes, although a) it happens really really abruptly, so we as viewers didn't have a whole lot to hang it on, and b) oh man, Underwood gave him nothing to work with there. Also I may have teared up when he stops singing in Edelweiss and Maria steps in to help him out; I found that scene much more affecting than the parallel scene in the movie. Anyway, I very much enjoyed seeing this alternate interpretation.
I don't have much to say about Audra McDonald as the Abbess, Laura Benanti as the Baroness, or Christian Borle as Max, except that I love them all, they were all just as completely awesome as I would have expected, and I thought it was worth it just to watch them. And the scene where Moyer and Benanti are talking and Underwood interrupts them... you know it's bad when I'm all "Maria! Go away and let the grownups talk!" (Personally, I think Benanti would have made a MUCH better Maria.)
I surprisingly liked Rolfe (Michael Campayno) a lot, because I am a total sucker for tenors, even though "16 going on 17" was, um, very poorly directed, as if they wanted us to think as poorly of him as possible.
Let's see... what else? The play is rather different from the movie, more so than I was expecting (okay, fine, I was expecting no differences). The Baroness is rather nicer than in the movie version; although I am kind of in love with evil!movie!Baroness, I rather like this one too because Benanti sells it so well. Rolfe gets saved at the end!!!! (I did not know this and it was a total shock to me.)
