Monthly arts column

‘I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?’ The answer to this question for Connie Fisher was probably, ‘The great British publicâ when they texted and phoned their votes to the TV show How do you solve a Problem like Maria?’ this autumn.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, bringing the musical version of The Sound of Music to the West End, came up with his characteristic and unnervingly brilliant understanding of the public spirit when he decided to choose his leading lady through popular TV vote rather than traditional auditions. A.A. Gill commented rather witheringly in his review that ‘the vast majority of [the public] will never have set foot in a theatre — to pick your star in this way is not just risky, it’s delusional’. Yet the canny, if delusional, Lloyd Webber has nevertheless found his way through our hearts to our all-important purse strings, breaking records at the box office.

Every night opening night

Most critics think the production fabulous and, more significantly, think that Connie is actually more than Lloyd Webber could ever have hoped for. Connie certainly delivers on her promise to ‘treat every night as opening nightâ and her response to the standing ovation and deafening applause was clearly one of joy. Everyone’s a winner. It has even been said that she is more suited to the role than Julie Andrews, which is where the fever surrounding this whole business could be described as going a bit over the top.

Cinderella pattern

So let’s get back to basics. The storyline is already deeply embedded in our subconscious. It’s Pretty Woman all over again. The King and I, Maid in Manhattan, Cinderella, the uplifting tale of a low status girl, in touch with her lowliness but bolstered and beautified by confidence, who softens the heart of the handsome ice-lord and in doing so brings health and happiness to all. It’s fitting that Connie Fisher herself follows the Cinderella pattern in her move from lowly telesales girl in Wales to Glamour and Fame on the West End stage.

The fairytale narrative of the musical is put into an historical context brimming with significance. Rogers and Hammerstein were against any form of oppression, a theme that runs through much of their work, and the weight of the impinging Nazi occupation does not disappear even in this heady and lighthearted production. It is Von Trapp’s refusal to bow the knee to Hitler that leads him to break off his engagement with Frau Schneider and to realise his passion for like-minded Maria. It is a bittersweet ending when Rolfe, recruited into the Hitler Youth, spots the hiding Von Trapp family together with his young sweetheart, Lisel, yet fails to raise the alarm out of loyalty to her.

Cute moments

We all (mostly) know the story, yet the pleasure principle that rewards knowing about what is going to happen still stands. Further pleasure can be derived from the director’s choices about cute moments with the smallest children, Fisher’s girly awkwardness and comic touches along the way. There’s no official trailer to watch, but you can catch snippets of the stage production if you type ‘sound of music’ into Youtube.com.

Will of God?

A Daily Telegraph critic wrote that The Sound of Music is ‘a show that restores one’s faith in human nature’. Does this critic mean the message of secular humanism that declares, along with Disney, that one must ‘climb ev’ry mountain’ in order to find one’s self-fulfilment? Or does he consider the maxim in Maria’s song ‘I have confidence in me’ to be one that reflects all that is best about humanity?

Inevitably, the Biblical references in the script, fitting in with the nun theme, are distorted for an alternative ideology. When Lesley Garrett’s Mother Superior asks Maria what she most desires above all else, Maria’s laudable reply, ‘to find out the will of God and to obey it’ gets transmuted from then on into something like ‘Right, well God wants you to go and look after seven children and make them love their new mother, so off you go’. The finale includes the Mother Superior quoting from Psalm 121, ‘From where does my help come?’, as the Von Trapps scramble up the slopes of the mountains that will certainly assist them to find freedom in Switzerland.

Society and Christianity

I’m not na•ve enough to expect that a secular West End musical will accurately reflect the gospel message. It’s just that I think The Sound of Music is a fairly accurate reflection of our society’s understanding of Christianity. The message appears to be about a clean cut purity that cares about other people, rejects evil and finds joy and reward in nature and spiritual feelings. While Christians do indeed believe that ‘the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you’ (Isaiah 55.12), it is in the context of God’s promise that he will accomplish peace for his people, for those who respond to the invitation to ‘turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them’ (55.7). The hills being alive with the sound of music is nice in the short term, and incredibly pleasant during the two-and-a-half hours in the London Palladium, but the psalmist tells us that lifting our eyes to the hills will lead us to realise that our hope and confidence doesn’t lie there in their physical reality or even ‘in me’, but in the realisation that ‘My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth’.

Hills alive - Eleanor Margesson enjoys clean-cut fun at the London Palladium

Every night opening night

Cinderella pattern

Cute moments

Will of God?

Society and Christianity

Eleanor Margesson

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