For this modern twist on 'The Sound of Music,' Austin audiences are part of the action

Zach Theatre's sky-high take on "The Sound of Music" keeps everything you love about the Broadway classic — and then adds just enough theatrical flair to make you treasure it all the more.

Without altering the essential qualities of the 1959 stage version of the musical, which starred Mary Martin, director Dave Steakley and team, in ways both subtle and bold, usher the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein show  about the Austrian Von Trapp singing family into the 21st century. 

It should be first noted that the 1965 mega-hit movie with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer differs in key ways from the stage musical, which is much more intimate and includes songs dropped from the film. Happily, Steakley and his longtime music director, Allen Robertson, skewed closely to the words, music, style and structure of the 1959 rendering.

The first thing one notices, however, is that the stage at the Topfer Theatre is radically different from its usual arrangements. A platform extends well into the house. On that and elsewhere onstage, audience members occupy 20 or so tables with chairs set up like a beer hall.

They become a part of the action. And the performers use those tables as part of their amplified stage.

"We went to some Bavarian beer halls," Steakley says. "We saw that it was a communal experience. It's easy to meet people in those settings. We wanted to transfer a part of that. It's our our post-pandemic return to 'play.'"

At one point, Steakley had considered doing a full sing-along version, but the group that controls the rights to Rodgers and Hammerstein's shows nixed it.

"Yet there is in our culture, in our DNA," Steakley says, "an urge to sing along."

That is not all. The show's band, which includes actors who double as instrumentalists, is playing almost as soon as you enter. Mostly beer hall music, including "Beer Barrel Polka," which gets the audience singing and dancing. At critical but unobtrusive intervals, the audience does so during the actual show.

Audience interaction has been a Zach Theatre hallmark for decades, but this effort takes that usually affable device a step further. 

In a similar vein, the actors/musicians wear clothes not from 1930s Austria but from today, modified for character and action, with a few Austrian touches. This becomes important during the dramatic climax near the end of the second act. More on that later.

All this fresh framework, however, fades to the background as soon as Amanda Rivera, as the novice Maria, sings "The Sound of Music" while seated with a guitar on the limb of a large sculptural tree. ("Into the Woods," the company's first full-scale theatrical foray during the pandemic, was staged outdoors last year under a similarly weighty tree on the theater's plaza.)

"There's this expectation of a twisting-in-the-Alps moment," Steakley says about opening because of the movie. "But Maria in a tree. Quiet. I wanted to see that production. I wanted to make that one."

How to characterize Rivera, who plays the would-be nun who takes on the job of governess for seven children, then falls in love with their widowed father? Her voice is extraordinarily expressive and, at the same time, exquisitely beautiful. As Maria, she radiates a sort of rooted humanity — a kindness, an openness, a feeling of being alive at every moment — that is impossible to fake.

I basically could watch her perform in any show.

As Captain von Trapp, Trevor Martin marshals a resonant voice and a presence that we witness evolve as the show's themes develop. Quite frankly, when Martin breaks into the title song, after we have already heard Rivera sing it alone, and then the children sing it delicately in harmony for their father, I just started sobbing.

In some ways, the show could have just stopped then and there. Point made. Emotions fully engaged.

The kids are great. Of course, I saw only about half of them, since they are double-cast and appear in alternating performances.

Tremendous in smaller roles are Lex Land as the inspiring Mother Abbess; Jill Blackwood as the worldly wise Baroness Elsa Schraeder, the captain's putative love interest; and Kenny Williams as the musical impresario who discovers the Von Trapp singers and then helps them escape, while exhibiting a dangerous habit of collaborating with the infiltrating Germans.

This extraordinary project was years in the making. The pandemic postponed it more than once. But what a smart move to produce such a timely show and interpret it in such an intelligent way, without losing the full force of the familiar score.

Back to the 21st-century dress: It becomes crucial because the characters who are revealed as Nazis look so banally normal, a warning for our times.

Steakley saves one last contemporary insight — handled more smoothly than a pandemic-inspired choice during "Into the Woods" — when the Nazis who chase the escaping Von Trapps inside the convent look for a critical — but not overstated — moment like the deadly white supremacist rally that assembled in 2017 in Charlottesville.

I was left in awe of the power of this musical, which has never earned the critical respect of Rodgers and Hammerstein's hits from the late 1940s and early 1950s. The movie, great as it is, always seemed to teeter on the saccharine.

Here, the love stories are very real. The people are very real. The songs seem to come from a real place.

I've already mentioned that I involuntarily wept when Martin as the Captain broke into the title song, but the truth is that I teared up every time it was sung.

Why? Steakley: "Music equals love."

Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@statesman.com.

If you go to 'The Sound of Music'

When: Through July 24

Where: The Topfer at Zach Theatre, 202 S. Lamar Blvd. 

Tickets: $25-$115

Info: zachtheatre.org

Recommended: For 8 and up due to adult and political themes