By Khalida Sarwari
It will be San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts, not so much the hills, that will be alive with the sound of music this month when a new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s beloved musical comes to town. Broadway San Jose’s production opens Nov. 8.
Directed by three-time Tony Award-winner Jack O’Brien, whose credits include “Hairspray,” “The Full Monty” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” the national touring production isn’t likely to be “your mother’s familiar ‘Sound of Music,’” according to O’Brien.
“We are tearing off the varnish of the past from one of the great glories of our theater-going experience and making it fresh,” O’Brien said.
Originally created for Broadway based on the book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the show is the story of Maria Rainer, a free-spirited postulant who takes a job as governess to the von Trapp family while she decides whether to become a nun. It doesn’t take long for her to fall in love with the children and eventually their widowed father, Capt. Georg von Trapp. Together, they devise an escape out of Austria and the grip of the Nazis.
The cast of the touring production will be led by Ben Davis, who has starred in Broadway’s “Violet,” “A Little Night Music” and “La Bohème,” in the role of the captain and O’Brien’s new discovery, Kerstin Anderson, as Maria.
A theater veteran of at least 20 years, Davis said he knew right away this was the role for him.
“It just felt right,” he said. “After so long in the business, you kind of get a feel of ‘OK, this is a good fit,’ and this was definitely a good fit.”
That isn’t to say that he grew up watching the film or musical. In fact, Davis said he’d only seen snippets of it up until he signed on to do the production. Still, the musical’s cross-generational appeal was not lost on him.
“The music is so recognizable,” he said. “Even people who don’t know what musical theater is, they may not know the musical but they know the songs. The sense of memory we carry with it reminds us of the holidays; it reminds us of our parents; it reminds us of our childhood.”
Originally from Indianapolis, Davis is a jock-turned-actor. He got his first taste of theater in high school when he quit basketball—”which in Indiana is a sin,” he noted—to partake in a school musical. He entered the theater scene almost immediately after graduating from college and spent years bouncing from New York to Los Angeles to London. And while theater is his great love, traveling across the country has allowed Davis to pursue another hobby: sampling and blogging about doughnuts. Fellow doughnut aficionados can take a look at his reviews at davisdonutdiary.tumblr.com.
Davis’ co-star, Anderson, is a student at Pace University who reportedly moved O’Brien to tears when she tried out for the part in New York City last year. She had just completed her sophomore year at Pace in pursuit of a fine arts degree in musical theater when she was offered the coveted role, beating out hundreds of other performers. This is Anderson’s first national tour.
The Sound of Music “gets down to the experiences of life, of figuring out where your place is and recovering from tragedy,” Anderson said. “The story is about overcoming the Nazis, [but] if you look at the themes, it can be about anything. The themes of this show are so universal.”
Anderson said the film, starring Julie Andrews, is a reminder of her childhood, when her family watched it on VHS and then later DVD. A fun fact about her is that she is from Burlington, Vermont, a city that’s less than an hour from Stowe, where the real-life von Trapp family settled in the early 1940s.
“We watched [the film] all the time growing up,” she said. “It’s certainly been a part of my life for a very long time.”
Anderson said she has “no idea” what life has in store for her post-tour, but that returning to New York is definitely in the cards. Ultimately, she aspires to become a professional stage actor.
For now, she is on a leave of absence from school to pursue a different kind of education: learning eight new things a day, she said.
“I’ve certainly learned a lot about how to preserve yourself to do eight shows a week,” she said, explaining that she’s learned about personal health, self-sufficiency and how to keep herself inspired as well as lessons about the country from her travels to different states and cities. “Truly, I should say I’m learning,” she said. “It’s a constant process.”
The show features music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, choreography by Danny Mefford and set design by Douglas Schmidt. In addition to the title tune, other familiar songs from the show include “My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Edelweiss.”
The San Jose engagement is presented as part of Broadway San Jose’s 2016-17 season.
“The Sound of Music” runs Nov. 8-13 at the Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd., San Jose.
Tickets are $43-$128 at ticketmaster.com, 800.982.ARTS (2787) or the City National Civic Box Office, 150 W. San Carlos St., San Jose. For more information, visit TheSoundOfMusicOnTour.com.
