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How do you solve a problem like Maria?
The question is one that stage directors ask every time they put on a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical “The Sound of Music.” Anyone who takes on the role of Maria Rainer, a postulant nun assigned to be governess for the seven children of a widowed naval officer in Austria in 1938, has to contend with Julie Andrews.
Although Mary Martin originated the role on Broadway in 1959, it is Andrews who immortalized Maria Rainer von Trapp in the 1965 film version, which broke box office records. Who can forget Andrews twirling on an Alpen mountaintop in what is sure to be one of the most recognized sequences in film history?
Director Ken Stack, for one.
In his production of “The Sound of Music,” running the next three weekends at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth, Stack hopes audiences will check their image of Andrews at the door.
“The character of Maria Rainer has a great deal of childish enthusiasm,” said Stack, who also directed the musical 10 years ago at the Grand. “She has a love of life and a real excitement about every moment in life. Julie Andrews played it with elegance and simplicity, all built around her wonderful voice. But the original intention for the show was to have Maria be more of a flibbertigibbet.”
Remember the lines from the song: “How do you find a word that means Maria? A flibbertigibbet! A will o’ the wisp! A clown!”
Stack found his flibbertigibbet in Kimberly Horn, a Bangor singer and familiar face in local
musicals. Horn went to John Bapst High School and now works as a receptionist at WBRC Architects/Engineers in Bangor. She doesn’t have a romantic story to tell about being in shows – though she has been in plenty in Bangor, Ellsworth and Somesville. She studied piano at home as a girl, sang with her older sister, who is now a trucker, and was a member of the choir at St. Johns Episcopal Church in Bangor. And she was a member of the Up With People! road tour in 1998.
But she wasn’t the stereotypical theater wannabe sitting in front of her mirror pining away to be onstage.
Indeed, Maria is Horn’s first lead role, and, as Stack whispered at a recent rehearsal: “Kim’s time has come.”
Even Horn, who will turn 30 during the run of the show, had a sense of the timing. That’s why she prepared in earnest for the audition and wowed both Stack and Robert Bahr, the music director.
“Kim has a natural energy,” said Bahr. “She brings that energy to life. So when she brings it to stage, it’s infectious. It creates a dynamic.”
But it was the opening song for the musical that caught Bahr’s ear.
“‘The Hills Are Alive’ should be bubbly, like you are laughing your way through the song, and I needed to see that,” said Bahr. “Kim showed me that.”
Horn knew she was prepared for the audition, but she did not allow herself to consider the lead seriously. After all, she does not look like Julie Andrews, and what director wouldn’t try to capitalize on typecasting?
Stack, for one.
“When Ken called me, he said: ‘Are you sitting down? We’d like you to play Maria,'” recalled Horn, smiling as she brushed aside a handful of her thick brown hair. “It’s incredible to me. I never lament going to rehearsal. I am always excited to go.”
Horn, who is in all but two scenes in the nearly three-hour show, found it easy to embrace the flibbertigibbet directive Stack suggested for Maria.
“I want to keep it as real as I can,” the actor said of her free-spirited performance. “I don’t think I ever leave the role completely. I’m perpetually distracted in my head. I dream it. But it’s an absolute joy.”
And that, Stack added, is how you solve a problem like Maria.
“The Sound of Music” will be performed 7 p.m. April 9, 10, 16, 17 and 23; 2 p.m. April 11, 18, 24 and 25; and 8 p.m. April 24 at the Grand Auditorium on Main Street in Ellsworth. Tickets, which are $8-18, may be purchased by phone at 1-866-363-9500 and 667-9500, or online at www.grandonline.org
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