How do you solve a problem like the Captain? Preparations for the opening night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of
The Sound of Music have been thrown into confusion by the decision by the leading man, Simon Shepherd, to withdraw from the role of Captain von Trapp.
The show is due to open next week, so it will be a tad difficult for the BBC to devote a series of Saturday-night shows to finding a suitable match for Maria. This is a grave pity. Not because I miss the spectacle of a magnificently camp Lord Lloyd-Webber passing judgment on the contestants from an elevated gilded throne, like a fey Nero deciding who should survive in a version of musical gladiators. Although I do miss that. But because all true fans of The Sound of Music know that the most important role in the production, the moral centre of the show, is the Captain.
Before I go any farther, I know that I have to pause while some, mildly perturbed, readers wonder how one can shoehorn the words “moral centre” into a sentence which also contains the phrase “Sound of Music”.
What is Gove on, they might wonder? He will be trying to tell us next that Shaggy is the ethical pivot in the Scooby-Doo narrative or trying to tease out the Kantian lessons from Mamma Mia! Writing about the “moral centre” in The Sound of Music, some readers might think, is like asking where the little label with nutritional information is on a stick of candyfloss. It’s a massive missing of the point, a misplaced quest for substance at the heart of a confection.
But I disagree. The Sound of Music may appear to some tastes as sugary beyond words. Some moments are certainly cloying. I am not sure the lonely goatherd adds much to the production. But then there’s a lot of rather silly comic business in much of serious music drama. And that’s where I think The Sound of Music sits.
There is a porous border between opera and musical, a territory which sits between The Ring Cycle at one pole and We Will Rock You at the other, where it’s difficult to draw precise dividing lines. Trevor Nunn’s production of Porgy and Bess at the Savoy Theatre shows how a work conceived as an opera can be adapted as a musical — and a whole range of music drama from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim occupies this territory.
I accept that it’s stretching the definition of the operatic to include the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but there is a seriousness, both of dramatic intent and thought, behind their work which should make us pause before pigeonholing it as just light entertainment. South Pacific dealt, sensitively for its time, with questions of race, and Carousel with issues of class.
The Sound of Music, even though it has become easy to mock, with cinema showings à la Rocky Horror Picture Show in which the audience turn up in costume and singalong at the right moments, has a more serious heart than most have been willing to allow. And that heart is Captain von Trapp.
His is the character who undergoes the most profound evolution in the drama. Although it’s Maria who dominates the musical side of the show, and her abandonment of her vocation as she finds love helps drive the plot, it’s Captain von Trapp’s journey that is more powerful. His development from frosty martinet to romantic hero might seem to be just another Mr Darcyesque transformation from froideur to warmth, but what makes Captain von Trapp special is not so much his move towards becoming a new man but his bravery in standing up for old virtues.
The most moving number in the whole production is still, undoubtedly, Edelweiss, the Austrian folk tune that Captain von Trapp sings at the Salzburg Festival and which he turns into a poignant song of resistance against the encroaching Nazi takeover of his country.
He is a believer in an older form of patriotism, based on service, which the ethnic nationalism of the Nazis perverts. So Captain von Trapp’s defiance of the new order in politics, like his decision to reject the social expectations which would have trapped him in marriage to the Baroness rather than Maria, combine to give his character a subtle and nuanced masculinity that is at once both sensitive and robust, and against which we can judge how others respond.
The failure of Rolf, Uncle Max, and all the other men in the production to measure up only underlines how difficult it is to do the right thing and emphasises the integrity of the captain.
Capturing that quality, while also conveying the initially unsympathetic aloofness with which the Captain conducts himself, requires a performance of rare skill. Which is why casting the Captain is no easy matter. But it’s also why The Sound of Music is more, much more, than just a couple of hours of great tunes.
Catalogue conumdrum
If you want cutting-edge fashion commentary, then this is emphatically not the place for you. So I may well be hideously behind the curve, but I can’t help noticing a profound change in buying clothes with interesting social ramifications. Ever more middle-income families seem to be buying their kit from catalogues. When I was young, the catalogue, whether Grattans or Littlewoods, was a rather dowdy and provincial way of purchasing clothes, suitable for those with limited incomes, constrained horizons and little leisure. Nobody boasted about getting their clothes from a catalogue.
But now you can’t go into a professional couple’s home without negotiating your way past a snowdrift of Boden, Bravissimo, Brora and other catalogues all offering fashions at discount prices. Why are they so popular? Could it be — given house prices, rising fuel bills and other costs — that the middle classes are finding their incomes squeezed, their time limited and their freedom to range across the high street constrained? Is the prevalence of catalogue shopping another sign of how our quality of life has been compromised? Or am I just out of touch?
Tape tribulation
Just to underline how out of touch I am, my car has no facility to play CDs, only a trusty old tape machine. But given how hard it is to find any new music on tape, I might as well have a phonograph in my Skoda for all the good it does me. There’s a limit to how many times I can listen to my decaying tape collection as I wait behind the cones on the M4. Is there any easy way to buy new recordings on tape these days? Or am I, not for the first time, completely missing the point?
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath
