Kara Tointon

This is a recording of the live transmission of The Sound of Music done several years ago by ITV. It is akin to a stage production but sets and multiple cameras are used to give more fluidity than simply filming head-on to a stage. However the effect is necessarily much more limited than the film version. A couple of songs omitted from that are included, but at least one film song is dropped. The order of some songs in the story is also changed in a way which makes little sense (eg children reputed never to sing are immediately harmonising and dancing); there are other gaffes such as two contradictory lines about a telegram being delivered.

There is more effort to place the story in the context of 1938 Austra and the Anschluss, but the ending is a bit tame and sentimental. Julian Ovenden makes a fairly engaging captain, with a pleasant voice, but he seems rather young for someone who was captain of a naval ship twenty years earlier. The children are not well differentiated but this is partly because of the limitations on camera angles caused by live performance. Max Dettweiler and the Baroness are played reasonably well. Kara Tointon sings quite well in the lead role, though she is no Julie Andrews - but she is arguably a better actress. All in all, worth watching as an alternative to the film, but is not a replacement for it.… (more)