HSPVA Presents Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music in All-School Musical

Maria with the seven von Trapp children: Gretl (Amaya Perez), Marta (Isabel Heckler), Brigitta (Kathryn King), Louisa (Libby Carr), Liesl (Mia Heckler), Kurt (Cameron O’Neill), and Friedrich (Cameron Biggart).

Every year, HSPVA performs an all-school musical, consisting of cast and crew members in various art areas. This year’s show, starring Jacob Allen as the stern, reluctant romantic Captain von Trapp, and Emily Sherman as his governess and eventual love interest Maria Rainer, was The Sound of Music.

Directed by theatre instructor Charles Swan, the musical’s versatile cast is mostly theatre majors, but also boasts of junior Kathryn King of the dance department as nine-year-old Brigitta von Trapp, sophomore Keaton Brown of the vocal music department as the servant Franz, and junior creative writer Andre White, with fellow singers Isabella Bernal and James LaBlanc, alongside dancers Clara Foster and Sarah Gowdy, in the ensemble. (More impressive is the sheer variety of students playing Nazis: this viewer spotted a black Nazi, a Latino Nazi, even a Jewish Nazi – for what better revenge is there than irony?)

In this musical set during the Second World War, Maria Rainer is a young woman who wants to become a nun, but is sent away from the abbey by the other nuns to experience normal life first and then decide whether she is cut out for the monastic life. She is placed in the house of a widowed submarine captain of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Georg von Trapp, and soon assumes a motherly role for his seven children.

Captain von Trapp (Jacob Allen) dancing with Maria (Emily Sherman).

Since von Trapp’s wife died, he has been detached, detesting everything from Nazis to music, but throughout the course of the show Maria teaches the children songs, from “Do-Re-Mi” to “Edelweiss” to “My Favorite Things” to the musical’s namesake piece, that have become classics. While Captain von Trapp and Maria fall for each other, the tranquility of the von Trapp family is ruptured by Anschluss, the Third Reich’s conquest of Austria. Ultimately, they seek refuge, fleeing to the Alps, finding consolation in the sound of music alone.

The multiple art departments of HSPVA united to create a truly moving spectacle. The vigorous, round-voiced Jacob Allen assumed the role of Captain von Trapp convincingly, while Emily Sherman fit well into the anguish of the monastic Maria and her maternal, governess-ing counterpart; and it all rested on the solidarity of HSPVA’s orchestra, conducted by Dr. Brad Smith, with the steady foundation of the string section, atop which lay the woodwinds (with an irresistibly catchy melody in “So Long, Farewell” which I suspect emanated from the piccolo), and then more layers of brass, percussion, guitar, and piano. Altogether, the all-school production of The Sound of Music represents what HSPVA is really about: getting talented people across different genres and art areas to collaborate in creative and interesting ways.