The hills are alive more than ever
'The Sound of Music' runs through Nov. 23 at Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St.
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on November 19, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Review: A well-staged ‘The Sound of Music’ revival highlights both the show’s familiar warmth and its unexpectedly sharp, still-timely political edge
by Lawrence Toppman
Until I saw the national tour of “The Sound of Music” again Tuesday at Belk Theater, I didn’t realize it was really two shows.
Act One gives us the heartwarming story of Maria, a would-be nun in 1938 Austria, whom the Mother Abbess sends into the world to discover her destiny. She falls for Capt. Georg von Trapp, a World War I military hero, and the seven children she serves as a beloved governess. This theme is ageless and, in some form, runs through all the major Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, of which this was the last.
Act Two quickly turns political. It’s about an authoritarian government that ignores the law, cannot tolerate dissent, and rounds up “undesirables” for prison or other unspecified fates. That drama is as current as headlines in this week’s media about masked Border Patrol employees stuffing Charlotteans into SUVs.
We don’t think of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein as American George Orwells. But the two men, both raised in Jewish families, saw what happened when the Nazis overran Europe, and they wrote this musical just 14 years after the end of World War II. (It opened on Broadway this week in 1959, with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It was the only R&H musical for which Hammerstein did not do the book.)
I think lyricist-author Hammerstein, who died nine months later of stomach cancer, realized this would be his last show and wanted it to be a mixture of triumph for the von Trapps and caution about the society that drove them out. (They landed in Vermont, where they now own 2,600 acres in Stowe. You’ll find an ad for the von Trapp Family Lodge and Resort in your program.)
Director Jack O’Brien, who hangs five titanic Nazi flags across the stage during the von Trapps’ public concert, might agree. He put together this production about a decade ago, with the possibility that it could go to Broadway. It didn’t — “The Sound of Music” hasn’t been there since 1998 — but it’s even stronger now than when I saw it here in 2015.
Every actress must decide how to solve the problem of Maria, who can’t be too assertive to be credible or so sugary she’s cloying. Cayleigh Capaldi has wisely taken her cue from the nuns’ song about her: She’s a clown whose games with the kids make her seem like a goofy big sister, yet she has elegance when needed, a good yodel (indispensable in “The Lonely Goatherd”) and high notes that soar.
Kevin Earley’s Captain softens slowly. He gradually seasons his starchy gruffness with tender moments, and his gentle baritone complements Capaldi’s soprano. The Captain has sometimes seemed like a supporting character to Maria or even his kids, because he sings so much less than they do, but not here.
O’Brien has been fortunate with supporting players, too. Ariana Ferch captures the awkwardness of a Liesl poised between girlhood and womanhood, Kate Loprest makes the Captain’s rich fiancée more appealing than usual, and Nicholas Rodriguez gives glad-handing entrepreneur Max such a pleasant veneer that he doesn’t creep us out for quite a while. Christiane Noll has warmth and authority as the Abbess, though she was shaky enough vocally that I didn’t know if she could climb every mountain in her big number. (She eventually did.)
What stood out most in this revival, though, were subtleties in the score, played by a larger-than-usual tour orchestra. Hammerstein, often derided for sentimentality, wrote some lyrics that could’ve come from Rodgers’ previous partner, Lorenz Hart. “How Can Love Survive,” with its witty puns and droll observations, feels amusingly cynical. “No Way to Stop it,” a duet for go-along-to-get-along tolerators of Nazism, reminds us what happens when the wealthy put their consciences to sleep. (Those songs were cut from the squeaky-clean 1965 film, of course.)
Rodgers and Hammerstein included no big dance number — it’s the only one of their six biggest hits that doesn’t have one — and all but a couple of songs rise organically from the plot. Indeed, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” starts as spoken advice from the Abbess to Maria before blossoming into melody.
For all of the preconceptions people have about how sweet the show must be — mostly from associations with the movie — I believe Hammerstein used his last burst of creativity to give us as real a narrative as he could write.
If You’re Going
“The Sound of Music” runs through Nov. 23 at Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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