‘Purists’ rap TV staging of iconic musical

CARRIE Underwood stars as Maria in “The Sound of Music Live!” on NBC. AP

Quite without planning or expecting to, we had a very instructive Christmas Day: After staying up late for noche buena and opening presents and such, our little nuclear family of seven adult humans and five dogs heard late morning Mass and partook of a really heavy brunch of still yummy leftovers—while watching a replay of NBC’s recent TV staging of “The Sound of Music.”

At first, we just intended to find out if Carrie Underwood could at least hold a candle to Julie Andrews’ iconic screen portrayal.

Once it was clearly established early on that she couldn’t, the special viewing session unexpectedly took on many side issues that we hadn’t planned on tackling on a lazy Christmas morning!

It turned out that many members of our family were “experts” in analyzing the “Sound of Music” syndrome, for the simple reason that they had watched the original movie many times through the years. In fact, the record-holder in our group had seen (and savored) the film at least 20 times!

Not to rain on her parade, but we informed her that the “official” Filipino record-holder was a photographer at UP who boasted that she had viewed the film for at least 50 times—not on disc, but in movie houses! The record said a lot about the quality and variety of the life she lived—but hey, who are we to judge?

In any case, our family’s familiarity with “The Sound of Music” was striking in another unexpected way, because it turned out that most of us were “purists” who loved the original so much that we objected to the changes that the NBC production had made.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” was the testy mantra of the day, even if it was pointed out that some changes were required because this was a live performance, not a film that could be edited any which way to make the finished product much more than just the sum total of its parts.

It was even more instructive to see that the top purist in our group was our youngest family member, who got ticked off by the fact that Carrie and so many other cast members were American, thus eroding the production’s “essential” European flavor.

The cast member who elicited the most derisive hoots was the singer-actor who played Rolfe, the allegedly teen swain who sang “I am 17 going on 18”—but looked 27!

Each time he was shown prancing around in his tight, little short pants, our viewing group dissolved in gales of outraged hoots!

The production’s direction also received its share of brickbats by way of a flurry of negative notes about the lazy staging and poorly mentored portrayals, all resulting in a significant loss in terms of the vibrancy and exhilaration expected of musical-theater performances.

Summing up, our group was happy to have watched the new TV take on “The Sound of Music,” but its limitations blunted the brilliance of its achievement. We accepted the fact that Carrie’s stellar appeal was essential in pulling in so many millions of viewers, but the relative lack of lightness and lilt in her portrayal was a major letdown.

Still, we’re cheered by reports that the TV version’s financial success has encouraged NBC to come up with other “made for TV” musicals, and we hope that “The Lion King” will be up next  as a special production on television.