The Sound of Music
OPENING: March 12, 1998
CLOSING: June 20, 1999
Seen: 1999
LOCATION: Martin Beck Theater
This entry is taking a turn.
Up until now, every entry has been about a show that my dad saw. But this one we don’t have a Playbill for. And that’s because it was my first Broadway show – and at nine years old, collecting them was a foreign concept and my dad had long stopped keeping them.
By the time I was nine, I was starting to show Theater Kid tendencies. I preferred movie musicals to cartoons, I hated the music that played on the radio, and my life goal at that point was to be Nala. And when I say “Be Nala” – I didn’t want to put on a costume and play pretend. I wanted to BECOME the lion princess who saved the Pride Lands. And if I couldn’t be Nala, I was willing to settle for Esmerelda.
My mom wasn’t thrilled with that one. Apparently wanting to become the Romani woman who narrowly avoids being raped in a Disney movie is a bit concerning to parents.
Anyway, by this point, I had seen most of the (then) modern Disney films and could sing the soundtrack to all of them. My mom, to this day, will tell anyone who will listen about the time that my aunt came to visit when I was three and I gave her a free concert performance of A Whole New World (true story).
So that Christmas, as we were sitting around the Christmas tree, someone figured out that my aunt’s favorite musical (Not the one who got the Aladdin concert) had come back to Broadway for the first time in forty years. And to top it off, it was my family’s version of kid friendly.
And that, friends, is how my first Broadway show was The Sound of Music.
I was excited. I had seen the movie at that point (Obviously). To top it off, American Girl magazine had just profiled the girl who played Brigitta. I knew I was going to love it.
So off we trotted to The Martin Beck (Now the Al Hirschfeld). My parents gave the speech that everything parent of the Theater Kid must give at such a momentous moment – the one about NO SINGING (Hear that, Wicked fans?).
This was 1999. And I still have a very, very clear memory of Rebecca Luker running out on stage after the nuns filed out. I still remember Tracy Walsh delivering Brigitta’s monologue to Ms. Luker and feeling something I didn’t have words for (As an adult, this word is “Passion”). And I still remember Dashiell Eaves as Rolf in the Nazi uniform at the end of the show.
This was several decades ago now. Clearly, it left an impression.
The Sound of Music was brought to Broadway in 1959, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel. It tells true story of Maria Rainer, the von Trapp family, and their resistance to Nazi occupation in 1938 Austria. For those of you who don’t know the plot, Maria is a young nun who is sent to be a governess to a military heroes seven children while the Nazis infiltrate Austria. This is a gross over simplification of the plot, but this is a non-spoiler blog.
And I did something that day that would stick with me to this day. All these years later, I can still recite some of the cast off the top of my head because while I sat there, in the Martin Beck, I memorized the Playbill.
Rebecca Luker.
Michael Siberry.
Fred Applegate.
Sara Zelle.
Tracy Walsh.
Ashley Rose Orr.
Jan Maxwell.
Dashiell Eaves.
Laura Benanti.
For those of you paying attention, that last name on the list is not a typo. The Sound of Music was future Broadway leading lady Laura Benanti’s Broadway debut. At the time I saw it, she was understudying Ms. Luker and playing an unnamed nun but eventually she took over the role fulltime.
It’s strange, but when I was a small theater kid, as I was at this time, there were certain people in my Playbills who I would obsess over. A majority of the people I obsessed over I have since met in a professional sense. Was this some sort of strange ESP that I had as a kid? It’s the only explanation I have for this. And it started with Ms. Benanti. I have not yet worked with her, but something inside my young brain said “She’s going to be awesome.”
Now, all these years later, my instincts were correct. Ms. Benanti is now a Tony winner and one of the Broadway regulars who I respect the most. She even made a return to The Sound of Music in the 2013 live televised version as Baroness von Schraeder.
As for Ms. Luker – she went on to become a massive Broadway star in her own right. Unfortunately, she lost her battle with ALS in 2020. Her loss was sent shockwaves throughout the Broadway community - it was though a light had gone out.
Two years later, I adopted a kitten. Her name when she came to me was Oreo. But the minute she came home, her name became Marta Maria Britta Louisa Gretl Watson.
Unfortunately, being a young kid did have one downfall: I eventually lost the Playbill and oddly enough, my dad didn’t keep his either so we have no physical record of this one. There have been other Playbills I have lost, but this one haunts me a bit.
The von Trapps may have had to escape Austria, but they brought me to Broadway. And a Theater Kid was born.
CAST: UNKNOWN
Gates, Anita. “Rebecca Luker, A Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59.” New York Times, December 23, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/theater/rebecca-luker-dead.html
Gioia, Michael. “Skipping School for the Biggest Journey of Her Life – Laura Benanti on the Sound of Music.” Playbill, March 09, 2015. https://playbill.com/article/skipping-school-for-the-biggest-journey-of-her-life-laura-benanti-on-the-sound-of-music-com-343568
