The Sound of Music
Music by Richard Rodgers Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II Book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse Suggested by The Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp
Justin Audibert and Kathy Bourne Photograph by Peter Flude
Festival 2023 A very warm welcome to our summer musical centrepiece of Festival 2023. Given that The Sound of Music is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s perhaps most treasured musical – haven’t we all grown up knowing most of the songs? – it seems almost incredible that this is its very first staging at Chichester. Like all great works, as well as the sheer joy and exhilaration of the glorious music and story, it has a timeless resonance too; the von Trapp family’s enforced flight from their homeland in the face of an occupying force feels no less pertinent today than it was in 1938. So it’s a delight to welcome Adam Penford, Artistic Director of Nottingham Playhouse, to make his Festival debut with this brand new production of the beloved original stage musical, along with a wonderful creative team, many of whom are returning to Chichester – including designer Robert Jones, choreographer Lizzi Gee and musical supervisor Gareth Valentine.
We’re also thrilled to welcome back Gina Beck, whose performance as Nellie Forbush in 2021’s South Pacific was also acclaimed in London and on tour. Ako Mitchell (Caroline, Or Change) and Emma Williams (Half A Sixpence, Love Story) also return, while Edward Harrison and opera singer Janis Kelly appear here for the first time. We wish them all a very enjoyable summer in Chichester. We are still barely half way through the Festival season with many delights still to come; notably our third musical of the season, the world premiere of Rock Follies, based on the iconic 1970s TV series. Plus some starstudded dramas, including the explosively funny Never Have I Ever and James Graham’s celebrated comedy Quiz. We hope to see you again soon and that today’s performance becomes one of your favourite things!
Justin Audibert Artistic Director
Kathy Bourne Executive Director
Rock Follies Based on the television series written by Howard Schuman
Book by Chloë Moss Songs by Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay With songs from the ground-breaking 1970s TV series, this punchy new musical is a rousing, riotous rollercoaster of woman power! Dominic Cooke directs a cast including Carly Bawden, Samuel Barnett, Angela Marie Hurst and Zizi Strallen.
Minerva Theatre 24 July – 26 August Tickets from £10 Book at cft.org.uk
Based on an original idea of the Rock Bottom Group (Diane Langton, Gaye Brown and Annabel Leventon) and Don Fraser. Songs used by kind permission of Universal Music Publishing.
Quiz By James Graham
Rory Bremner, Britain’s top satirical impressionist, stars as Chris Tarrant in James Graham’s thrilling, entertaining and provocative drama, directed by Daniel Evans and Seán Linnen. Get ready to answer the ultimate 50:50: guilty or not guilty?
Festival Theatre 22 – 30 September Tickets from £10 Book at cft.org.uk
A little bit different
‘Expect the unexpected’ could be the motto for Chichester Festival Theatre’s CFT Lates and Summer Sessions: two recently introduced strands of programming designed to offer something a little bit different to the shows in the main theatres. CFT Lates was born out of the success of the 2019 Chichester Spiegeltent, ‘which proved there was an audience looking for entertainment they might not normally associate with CFT’, says Georgina Rae, CFT’s Director of Planning and Projects. ‘And we wanted to look at opportunities to programme artists on a lighter scale than an entire play.’ Happening in the Minerva Bar on the last Friday of the month (usually), CFT Lates encompass comedy, drag nights, music and improv. ‘It will look different each time you come,’ Keshira Aarabi, Projects & Events Co-ordinator adds. ‘In April we held a Noël Coward cabaret which was the first time we’d done a CFT Lates connected to a production. ‘The Minerva Bar has a relaxed, informal atmosphere and attracts a really varied audience of all ages. Tickets are £10, or £5 if you’re a Prologue member aged 16 - 30. We keep it flexible; you can book ahead but tickets are available on the door too, so if you feel like an impromptu night out at the last minute – perhaps after seeing a show – you can. Start times range between 8 – 10pm to ensure we don’t clash with the show in the Minerva.’ Coming up are Fest to Fest (27 July), with comedians en route to Edinburgh, and Musicals Bingo (15 September) which promises drag queens, show tunes, shade and shenanigans! Even more informal are the Summer Sessions, which offer free outdoor music on the park. ‘Since the pandemic we’ve embraced our position on the edge of Oaklands Park much more – moving the main Café and introducing deck chairs on the grass, encouraging the building to be a real community space,’ Georgina says. Initially trialled in 2022, this year another seven sessions will take place over central summer Fridays. ‘We invite local musicians to perform outside the Theatre on a Friday night in the run-up to the start of the show. The bar is open and we hope it’s an opportunity for the audience coming to the Festival Theatre to have a very pleasant pre-show experience – but also something that local people can enjoy, whether or not they’re coming to a show.’ Keshira’s open call-out for local musicians interested in a paid opportunity to perform at CFT resulted in ‘over 90 applications for seven slots!’ she exclaims. ‘There were some amazing people: it was so hard to narrow it down. They have a 35-minute set and styles will range from jazz to acoustic to keyboards, original music and covers, with musicians of different ages and backgrounds.’ For more info, visit cft.org.uk/cft-lates and cft.org.uk/events/summer-sessions
Discover new foodie experiences Street Food at CFT
Like some more?
Satisfy your on-the-go cravings with the new menu in our Street Food truck! Pre-order on arrival, click and collect from our sunny al fresco terrace.
Pop in for pizza, cracking cakes and barista coffee from the Café on the Park or de-stress with a drink in a deckchair when the sun shines. Bliss!
Drinks with friends If you’re looking for a great spot to dine with your theatre pals, look no further. Fantastic food featuring local, seasonal ingredients plus à la carte options, top notch service and excellent wine. It also happens to be the closest restaurant to the Theatre so there’s no need to rush to catch the overture.
For the full menu of food and drink, visit cft.org.uk/eat, email dining@cft.org.uk or call 01243 782219.
The Sound of Music
Music by Richard Rodgers Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II Book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse Suggested by The Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp
Long, So Fare Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II Photo courtesy of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization: A Concord Company
The Sound of Music is the last and most popular work by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the partnership that dominated the Broadway musical when the Broadway musical dominated American pop culture. And its enduring popularity has obscured both the path-breaking theatrical innovations of its creators, and its own gentle merits as a work of art. When it opened on Broadway in 1959, elite opinion saw The Sound of Music as a filigreed throwback to the age of operetta, an era that Rodgers and Hammerstein had presumably entombed 16 years earlier with Oklahoma!, whose seamless integration of music, drama and dance – and, above all, quiet naturalism – ushered in the serious, modern musical play. The team had followed that electric debut with such innovative hits as Carousel (which tackled spousal abuse), South Pacific (which attacked racism) and The King and I (which explored East-West cultural tensions). By those standards, The Sound of Music’s sentimental romance was retrograde entertainment, and the smartest of the smart set was unsparing in its scorn. But by the second night’s performance, Hammerstein, a consummate man of the theatre, watched closely and delivered a different verdict. ‘Make no mistake!’ he insisted. ‘This is a hit… Just look and listen to that audience! They couldn’t care less about the reviews. I promise you, this is a smash hit!’ And so it was, running for three and a half years in New York and nearly twice as long in London, where it set a then-new record as the West End’s longest running musical. The worldwide success of the 1965 film version, starring Julie Andrews, only cemented the show’s popular appeal. Those who would knock The Sound of Music overlook two towering realities. First, its heart-tugging tale of the Trapp family’s
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flight from Nazism is more true than not (granted, the family escaped on a train to Italy and not by climbing into the mountains outside Salzburg). And second, the play reflects the unselfconscious conviction of its creators, including the playwrights Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who wrote the original book. Years later, Crouse’s son, Timothy, himself a prominent journalist, explained the conventional wisdom, saying that show business cynics had ‘Acted as if Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lindsay and Crouse were one of those big food conglomerates who do testing in a lab to create a snack with just the right combination of salt and fat and especially sugar to make it a tour de force of empty calories that consumers can’t stop eating.’ But ‘What these people were incapable of seeing,’ Crouse added, ‘was that the key ingredient of the secret sauce was sincerity. Whether or not you agree with the vision offered by The Sound of Music, it was a sincere vision, sincere on the part of all four guys. They believed in what they’d written.’
‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It adds up. It sings. It parses in the grammar of the heart.’ Publisher, Max Schuster In a letter to Hammerstein shortly after the Broadway opening, the publisher Max Schuster had a similar view. ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts,’ he wrote. ‘It adds up. It sings. It parses in the grammar of the heart.’ The show had an unusual genesis for a team that famously preferred to find its own stories, and to cast non-stars. It was brought to Rodgers and Hammerstein as a package deal by its original Maria, Mary Martin, then one of the reigning divas of Broadway and a veteran of the team’s South Pacific a decade earlier. The source material was Die Trapp Familie, a lightly fictionalised, non-musical 1956 German film, and Martin’s initial pitch was for a show that would blend