Sure, the music is the thing in “The Sound of Music,” but the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic has a way of surfacing the latent gardener in some directors. Many are tempted to simply plant their performers onstage and bid them sing.
It’s clear that Max Wojtanowicz is mindful of the inertia inherent in this approach, even as he, too, seeks to intensify the focus on such numbers as “Edelweiss,” “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” and “My Favorite Things.”
In his production of “Sound” that opened over the weekend at Bloomington’s Artistry theater — a show that marks the directorial debut of an actor who was mesmerizing in “Art” at the Guthrie Theater — Wojtanowicz gives the elegant production a propulsive verve.
He also finds a balance between being too spare on the one hand and cluttering the staging with theatrical froufrou. Set designer Katie Phillips’ smart drops and simple furniture pieces gesture toward the various locales in the story about an Austrian family’s flight to freedom as Nazis take over their country. Costume designer Nat Koch-Smith has nattily attired the cast, all sharply lit by Karin Olson.
The orchestra, led by Raymond Berg, lays down a bed of music that veers from playful to agitated, fright to sweeping romance. In this setting, in which the onstage orchestra becomes the mountain to be climbed, Wojtanowicz’s singer-actors breathe new life into the songs.
Sheena Janson Kelley imbues Maria, the frumpy postulant-turned-smitten governess of Capt. Georg von Trapp’s super-cute stairstep children, with both authenticity and dewy sweetness. It’s hard for actors playing Maria not to have Julie Andrews, who defined the role, playing in their heads. But Janson Kelley evacuates Andrews long enough to put her own spin on the title song plus “My Favorite Things” and “Do-Re-Mi.”
Rodolfo Nieto’s Von Trapp is every bit the remote naval iceman we expect him to be, but his world gets slowly warmed by Maria when he sees the joy that she is able to bring out in his children. Nieto’s “Edelweiss” is brief but loaded with emotion.
As Mother Abbess, Susan Hofflander makes the metaphorical peaks vibrate with her powerhouse vocals on “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”
