For those of us who lived through the 60s and 70s The Sound of Music is synonymous with the 20th Century Fox film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

And I suppose subconsciously this is always in the back of one’s mind when seeing any stage production of this Rogers and Hammerstein musical.

The stage version obviously differs from the film in a number of respects and one of these is the addition of extra songs in the stage version that were not used in the film and also the fact that a couple of songs in the film are used at different points in the story on stage.

One of these is My Favourite Things which on stage is sung by the Mother Abbess and Maria, whereas in the film it is sung by Maria and the children during the thunderstorm on the first night that she arrives. Instead on the stage she comforts them with the song The Lonely Goatherd. Both of these changes seemed to me totally out of context.

The show has been running for the past couple of weeks at Leeds Grand theatre starring local girl Verity Rushworth as Maria and pop star Jason Donovan as Captain Von Trapp.

Now, I don’t know whether Jason Donovan was having a bad night or was trying to emulate Christopher Plummer who did not have the best of singing voices, but for someone who has had ten Top Ten chart hits including five number one singles, this was a very poor performance on the night I attended. I only hope this was a “one-off” and that the rest of the West Yorkshire theatregoers who had paid good money to watch this production were not equally as disappointed over the past couple of weeks.

Verity Rushworth was much better as Maria both in her singing and her acting but she is no Julie Andrews as far as singing ability is concerned and I suppose that this is the benchmark in this particular musical against which one must always judge the performance of Maria.

She performed well but one thing that greatly spoiled her performance was the whooping and hollering by her friends and relatives in the row behind me.

The highlight of the show for me however was the performance by Marilyn Hill Smith as the Mother Abbess who was as good as, if not better than, Eleanor Parker who played this role in the film, and that is saying something. Her rendition of Climb Every Mountain made the hair on the back of one’s neck stand on end! Also, I must praise the seven children who performed outstandingly both individually and collectively.

The set design by Robert Jones was excellent. Robert also was in charge of costume design and again this was of the highest quality. The direction of Jeremy Sams was very good as was the choreography by that stalwart Arlene Phillips. It is just a pity that the performances by the two main principals failed to live up to the rest of the production.