Classic tale is a lavish, must-see treat

The Sound of Music, Palace, Manchester,

Just what Christmas needs to complete the set: panto just about everywhere, warbling ex-soldiers over at the Lowry and now, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s nuns and Nazis.

I say “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s”, rather than Rodgers and Hammerstein’s, because it was the noble lord who rescued this biggest of all traditional musicals from under-funded tours and amateur performances and threw a bucketload of money at it.

Then he got the BBC to run the best marketing campaign any stage musical could have to promote it; or rather, he launched the TV search for his Maria, won by one Connie Fisher.

And it is Connie Fisher who returns to the role in Manchester for Christmas — and proves just how shrewd a producer Lloyd-Webber was to point the public at her. Like Julie Andrews before her, the actress has a personality that is a mixture of sweet and appealing that is ideal for this most sentimental of all shows. Fisher looks fresh and leaps about, if not with the complete passion and energy of a great actress, then certainly like someone born to play this particular role. Opposite her are, of course, a septet of appealing (all right, tear-jerkingly cute) youngsters who look like they were bought from a sweet shop but perform like winsome rottweilers: one falter and they bite the scene out of the adults’ hands, then take the hands too.

For the ladies not broody about youngsters, there’s Michael Praed as their father. The one-time Robin of Sherwood has grown into distinguished middle-age looking like the younger brother of Jeremy Irons, but softer down the middle.

In almost every respect this “Sound of Music” is, as the posters say, a “lavish, must-see treat”.

The money is evident in huge computerised sets that change seamlessly in seconds; in a terrific band, in perfect stage sound, in terrific casting and in smart, well-honed direction.