Rush County Players present The Sound of Music

On the lovely spring evening of May 22, 2010, I had the pleasure of seeing the Rush County Players of Rushville, Indiana present a live production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. I'm not saying they'd make you forget Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, but they were pretty good.

I don't know that a major review is called for, but I do want to send out a little attabouy to a couple of these people. Janet Foster made an especially lovely Maria, and she sang quite well, as did Bruce Jordan as Captain Von Trapp.

But the very bestest singing of this Saturday night was definitely Dana Flynn as the Mother Abbess singing "Climb Every Mountain." She made me all tingly in my seat over a song that I'd not previously regarded as a big favorite.

Also, I got to give a little shout out to a Steve Harmon in the role of Max Detweiller. He was probably one of the better people here, acting wise. But what really killed me was that, at least from a distance on stage, he looked and sounded a lot like Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike, the oldest of the X-Files "lone gunmen."

This was the first time I'd seen this on stage. I went home and stayed up half the night watching the movie again, most especially noting differences between the 1959 stage play versus the 1965 movie release. There were some things changed around, including a couple of new songs, notably Maria's "I Have Confidence" number.

But the big meaningful difference was in the Elsa Schraeder character. In the movie, she was simply a romantic rival to Maria's interest in the captain, and frankly not that interesting. He preferred Maria - which was right, given the little bitch move of confiding to Max that she intended to ship the chillen off to boarding school. Captain Von Trapp didn't hear this however, and it's kind of generic and easy set up bitch behavior.

But in the play, she had a much more interesting point. Captain Von Trapp backed away from her for a specific reason. She's a rich widow with a stake and something to lose, so she indicated her intent to try to get along with the Nazis. THAT was the deal breaker.

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THE PROFUNDITY OF PLAY