5th Avenue is alive with Broadway stars

There is an adorable child of 5 in "The Sound of Music" at the 5th Avenue Theatre.

Sure, sure — this ever-popular, ultra-wholesome Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical always needs a lineup of cute tots to embody the chirpy young von Trapp family singers of Austria.

But what's special about little Paige Befeler as Gretl von Trapp is not just that her mom is the radiant Broadway leading lady Kim Huber, who stars here as the nun-turned-governess Maria. It's also that she never misses a cue — and at the same time, she isn't one of those eerily perfect child actors.

When it isn't her turn to chirp, she's prone to twirling her Tyrolean skirts, eyeballing the crowd and handily upstaging her cohorts by just being herself.

Thanks to such jots of spontaneity, this isn't the slickest "Sound of Music" you'll ever see. But it is pretty, agreeable and musically admirable, and not lacking in star power. Playing opposite the delightful, silvery-voiced Huber (who came to Seattle as the star in "Beauty and the Beast") is Terrence Mann, who originated the role of Beast on Broadway — and, for all you "Cats" fanciers, the original Rum Tum Tigger, as well.

Staged conventionally by Jamie Rocco, this "Sound of Music" is 5th Avenue's hasty replacement for a canceled run of a "Dr. Dolittle" musical. It boasts massive, old-fashioned rented sets and backdrops (designed by Kenneth Foy), with alpine vistas that look like tinted illustrations from an antique edition of "Heidi."

That unreal, storybook aura — extended by Lynda L. Salsbury's costumes and John McLain's lighting — is fitting. The final collaboration by the legendary team of composer Rodgers and lyricist Hammerstein, "The Sound of Music" slathers the World War II-era saga of the actual von Trapp family with a heavy layer of shlag (whipped cream).

The show's mawkish book, by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, idealizes Maria, her courtship with the widowed, anti-fascist Capt. Georg von Trapp and his seven kids, and even the clan's escape from the Nazis. (The real von Trapps fled by train, not hiking over the Alps.)

But the 1959 musical (and hit movie it spawned) keep on perking along, thanks mainly to a score of melodious standards ("My Favorite Things," "Do Re Mi," "Edelweiss," et al) which still enchant kids new to them.

Cushioned by lush orchestral backing, the major tunes are polished off in gleaming good voice by Huber and Wagnerian opera singer Susan Marie Pierson, as Maria's saintly Mother Abbess. When Pierson unleashes her rich, rolling vibrato on "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," an ovation is inevitable.

Mann gets few chances to sing but registers an amiably low-key, bemused portrayal of von Trapp. The youths playing his offspring are all fine, with fresh-faced Cara Rudd a stand-out as the teenage Liesl.

As von Trapp's jaded Viennese friends, David Hunter Koch and Kristin Flanders play it light and ingratiating, too. It turns out Flanders, known for her dramatic turns at Intiman Theatre, has a perfectly pleasant singing voice. Too bad she can't also use it on "No Way to Stop It," a bracing, welcome dash of musical bitters that was left out of the "Sound of Music" film and is too often absent in stage renditions like this one.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com