Hong Kong, the wait is nearly over for The Sound of Music
As Andrew Lloyd Webber musical begins five-and-a-half week run, we talk to cast members and to producer David Ian about how the show began
When musical producers Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Ian first discussed a new version of The Sound of Music for London's West End more than a decade ago, they had a problem. How should they cast the lead role of Maria, a young nun who starts to work as a nanny to a musical family in Austria in the 1930s? They needed someone young who you really do believe "climbs a tree and scrapes her knee", yet who was also a big enough name to fill the London Palladium.
The first promising discussions with Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson led nowhere. They had the idea of holding auditions for the role on TV, where one candidate each week would be voted out.
"The programme was brought on by the BBC as a summer filler," recalls Ian of the 2006 show. "We were genuinely nervous about it, Andrew and I."
Millions of pounds were at stake. There was a huge risk that they could end up with someone the public voted for as the underdog but who couldn't do the job. And the format was designed to let that happen. "I remember BBC were mostly focused on the fact that it was a genuine audition process and the voting had to be open handed," Ian says.
But they were lucky. The series gained cult status. And the winner, Connie Fisher, was Ian's and Lloyd Webber's choice too; the show opened in 2006 to five-star reviews and has kept going strong ever since, performing to packed houses around the world. The Sound of Music will begin its Hong Kong run on May 15.