A cloudy cold Friday morning in July, and rooms 4 and 5 were preparing to go to the Sound of Music stage show. The Murphy's bus was waiting for us to pile on board, and as we drove along Browns Road, we were all excited and chatting loudly.
The Sound of Music is a musical stage play written by Rodgers & Hammerstein in the 1950s. In 1965 it opened on the big screen starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Anyway, enough about the facts...
Destination: Aotea Centre in Auckland city. Why? Because we had watched the Sound of Music movie and thought it would be an awesome idea to go and watch the stage show live. Arriving at our destination, we piled into two wobbly lines much to the teacher's delight.
Some of us sang "Do Re Mi" as we walked to the building. Inside the lighting was dim, and ushers were rushing around trying to seat at least 200 students. We got to sit on the far side of the stage in the front, the band was on our side.
Opening scene: the nuns are singing and Frauline Maria sings "The hills are alive..." Some of the scenes were different compared to the movie. For example, Frauline Maria and the Reverend Mother sing "Favourite Things" inside the abbey. In the movie, Frauline Maria sings it to the Von Trapp children during a storm.
When it was all over we were quite surprised at how different the stage version was to the movie version. Never mind, our stomachs rumbled - typical Samoans, we were hungry!
A great day, and we ended up singing a mixture of Sound of Music songs and Samoan songs all the way home. The bus driver's facial expressions never changed - maybe we were giving him a headache. Oh well, he sure did appreciate our singing in the end. Thank you to our teachers and our parents for looking after us. The cost? $7.50! The Sound of Music - where everyone gets a bargain.
