National tour of ‘The Sound of Music’ highlights kids and a kiss

No one is going to yank “The Sound of Music” off its Alpine peak at this point. But Wednesday night at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, where veteran director Jack O’Brien’s grand-scale national touring production has taken up residence for a couple of weeks, both the flaws and the appeal of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic came into sharp relief.

The first half of the musical is primarily a children’s show, and who doesn’t enjoy watching a gaggle of gifted young performers move through their paces? The second act is more adult and political, even though, if you listen closely, you realize Captain von Trapp’s politics are far more concerned with Austrian national pride than with any fundamental outrage at Nazism. (It’s worth remembering that very little of this was yet dealt with widely on Broadway when the musical opened in 1959.)

‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’

Somewhat recommended

When: Through June 19

Where: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph

Tickets: $24 – $115

Info: (800) 775-2000;

www.BroadwayInChicago.com

Run time: 2 hours and 40 minutes with one intermission

To be sure, this is a lavish production. Douglas W. Schmidt’s sets, from a mountain backdrop and cathedral grandeur to the von Trapp family’s grandiose mountain estate, often feel a bit too Technicolor, and the massive moving panels used in scene changes can be more than a little dwarfing and distracting. But the multiple perspectives (with superb lighting by Natasha Katz) are impressive. And Jane Greenwood’s costumes add zest.

It is worth considering the production’s highlights as suggested by the opening-night audience’s response. Three scenes received the greatest applause: The moment when Maria (Kerstin Anderson), the former postulant-turned-governess whose buoyant spirit was never meant for life in a convent, is finally kissed by her employer, Captain Georg von Trapp (handsome, aristocratic Ben Davis); the first act finale, when the unusually maternal Mother Abbess (Melody Betts, familiar from her work at many Chicago theaters) brings a soulful operatic sound to the show’s anthem, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” and the neatly done (if rather too drawn out) interplay of kids and teacher in “Do Re Mi,” in which you get the feeling that the seven von Trapp children — raised by their strict, mournfully widowed father, who has forbidden music in the house — are really being taught the basics of singing that will ultimately save their lives.

Anderson, tall and slender, has a warm voice and an easy manner. She is too mature in both face and bearing to be a convincing naive girl, but to her credit she doesn’t try to play cute (and she has been notably freed of that near obligatory spin of joy in the title song). In many ways she is an adult from the moment she leaves the abbey and enters the von Trapp household as a governess. The same could be said of 16-year-old Liesl (Paige Silvester), whose initial reluctance to be considered one of the kids is a nice touch. Among those kids, Iris Davies is the charmer as Brigitta, the winningly perceptive 10-year-old.

Merwin Foard is amusing as Max Detweiler, the opportunistic and politically accommodating impresario, and he leads two of the most sophisticated “adult” songs: “How Can Love Survive?” and “No Way to Stop It,” both sung along with von Trapp and his wealthy fiance, Elsa (Teri Hansen).

O’Brien’s direction of the show is at its weakest in the final escape scene in which the crucial level of tension and terror is far from believable. But as we all know, the von Trapps made it over those mountains.