The Sound of Music; Footlight Theatre (Upcoming show)

The classic musical The Sound of Music hits the local stage this November, courtesy of Footlight Theatre.


Music by Richard Rodgers (Cinderella, Pal Joey), lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (Carousel, The King and I), and book by Howard Lindsay (Anything Goes) and Russel Crouse (Anything Goes).  Directed and choreographed by Lalainia Lindbjerg-Strelau (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Footlight), with musical direction by Monique Creber. Costumes by Chris Sinosich (Singin’ in the Rain, TUTS), set design by Marshall McMahen and lighting by Des Renard.

Starring Bree Greig (The Fantasticks, Playhouse), Steve Maddock (The Fantasticks, Playhouse), Carolyn Bergstrand (Annie, TUTS), David Blue and Grace Fatkin. Featuring Kaitie Allinger, Deanna Baker, Michelle T. Baynton, Liane Berlin, Sierra Brewerton, Michelle Briggs, Devon Busswood, Brittany Cairns, Tyson Coady, Vanessa Coley-Donohue, Michelle Creber, Sara Davidson, Elaine Francis, Emily Fraser, Luke Alexander Gair, Shannon Hanbury, Jake Hildebrand, Darryl Hol, Denise Johnson, Talar Kaladjian, Kathleen Kelly-Driscoll, Shantini Klaassen, Steven Krajnyak, Laura Luongo, Aubrey Maddock, Matt Mazur, Myles McCarthy, Carol Miller, Eve O’Dea, Shannon Pauls, Joanne Perkins, Susan Reid, Taylor Robinson, Natalie Sharp, Olivia Steele-Falconer, Robin Sukorokff, Alyssya Swales, Helen Volkow, Nancy Von Euw, Jeffrey Wallace, Michael Wilkinson, Jacob Wolstoncroft and Alison Wright.

Footlight Theatre Company presents The Sound of Music from November 5 – 20, 2010, at the Michael J. Fox Theatre, 7373 MacPherson Ave, Burnaby. Tickets are available online or by phone at 604-684-2787.

8 responses to “The Sound of Music; Footlight Theatre (Upcoming show)

  1. What a terribly amateur performance. Hideous sets, abhorrent lighting, inane performances, awful and over-choreographed. To charge $38 a ticket for this amateur endeavor is outrageous!

    I could not see the actors half the time as the lighting was too dim. There should be tension in this show (especially at the end) when your audience is laughing, you’re in trouble.

    A huge step backwards for footlight theatre.

    The costumes were lovely. I hope you’ll see & review this show just in case I’ve missed the mark. I saw the Friday night performance (preview) so unless they re-cast and re-lit the show I doubt it got better.

    **Editor’s Note** This comment has been edited **

  2. Attended Sunday November 7, 2010 – 2:00 pm performance. The show was marvelous! The audience throughly enjoyed all the jokes and show. This was supported by the standing ovation the cast received. Kudos to the blond girl playing one of the Von Trapp children. She tripped and hurt her leg coming down the stairs and didn’t let it phase her. The sets were really well done for all of the scenes. The setting where the Von Trapp Family was performing at the Music Festival was done so well with the performers at the sides of the audience with the red banners with the Nazi symbol. It really hit you to see that. My family, husband, daughter, son and husband’s parents, all really enjoyed the show and felt all the performers met their marks. A great group of performers, all outstanding in their singing and acting. Little Gretel was so cute! Bree Greig exceptional. Helen Volkow very entertaining. Keep up the good work, we’ll be back to see more shows from the Footlight Theatre. And yes the costumes were lovely.

  3. @Janice — the performance I attended several of the children tripped/slipped and fell throughout the performance. I would say that constitutes an UNsafe set/working area for the kids. Yes – the Nazi symbols certainly made you feel like you were “in” the arena; however I stand by my remarks that the Nazis were played cartoonishly inappropriate. The scene where one pushes down a nun was obviously done purely for shock factor, and made little to no sense, as well as seemed out of place with the “ein, schvi, dry” characterization.

    I have attended Footlight shows in the past — I found Bree Grieg to be the best part of their Joseph last year — I was sorely disappointed in her performance in The Fantasticks and in this show.
    I’m glad you’ll continue to spend your $ on Footlight performances – I’m sure it is nice to have that much money to throw around on amateur theatre.

    PS – A standing ovation does not a good production make. The night I was there, the audience seemed amazed that people were able to “remember all those lines.”

    **Editor’s Note** This comment has been edited **

  4. We enjoyed the performance on Saturday Night. Tickets seem alittle high however, we were given ours by a friend who couldn’t attend.

  5. I felt an overwhelming desire to respond to that lovely gentleman by the name of Erik – what a ray of sunshine he is! I am just curious – do you have trouble finding people who are willing to join you in a night out at the theatre? …… just saying!

  6. Thank you Alison!
    Please read review of the show from Adam Abrams on The Vancouver Musical Theatre Calendar. He really does a great review!Great pictures too!
    Footlight Theatre has added an extra show due to the overwhelming response from the public.
    To Footlight Theatre, keep up the good work! We really enjoyed the show!

  7. It’s a shame that this Erik has left with such a negative opinion of what my wife and I thought was a wonderful production. In listening to the people around us and those in the foyer at break and after the show I can’t believe that Erik was at the same show. In looking at the website for ticket sales I see that three of the four shows have been sold out and the remaining shows are close to sell outs also. The only show which still has a lot of tickets left is the new show that was added this week because of the popularity of the show.
    We thought that the sets were wonderful. Very colourful and tastefully used throughout each scene change. The costuming was very colourful. We were amazed at how quickly the cast especially the children were able to make the quick changes.

    Perhaps the only thing we might agree with the poster Erik was the lighting.

    Erik’s comments about the set being unsafe for kids I think was unfounded. A small child on a set of stairs can slip at the best of times. In theatre as opposed to film they don’t have the advantage of reshooting a scene. I agree with the previous blogger the fact that she got up and continued without a fuss does show some professionalism.

    Having watched the original movie so many times over the years I found this very close with the exception of the added scenes which were different from the movie. But then this is a theatrical version of script which I am sure is different. As to being amateurish perhaps the blogger should go to You Tube and see some of the other productions that are shown there. I did just to see comparisons and I found Footlight Theatres production to be very good.

    I am glad to see that people like Janice, Alison, Rob and Joanne and Adam Abrams have found the production exciting as we did. We would go again and might just do that.

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