Television executives and advertisers will no doubt disagree, but delivering high
ratings and selling a lot of commercial time does not (necessarily)
equal ability or versatility. I am all in favor of making live theatre
performances available to a worldwide audience in a broadcast format -
the National Theatre Live program is doing a stellar job of this in
cinemas around the world - but if we're going to do it, let's do it right. Viewing audiences deserve
that, even if - especially if - they don't in the normal run of things have the opportunity to
experience professional theatre performances.
I spent some quality time Friday afternoon looking at threads on Facebook and on various media sites about Thursday night's live presentation of The Sound of Music, starring country music star and American Idol winner Carrie Underwood, and I was surprised by the high number of comments to the effect of "Well, she wasn't very good, but hey, she's pretty and she tried hard, so let's cut her some slack - she's a country singer from Oklahoma, she hasn't had the theatre training or experience that those other performers have."
Well exactly. Which is why I'd wager a lot of us were hoping that the Captain would send this blonde, bland nunbot back to Nunberg and marry Laura Benanti's witty, sexy Baroness instead. Or Audra McDonald's compassionate, pragmatic Mother Abbess. Or even Christian Borle's wryly elegant Max, for God's sake. (Although in pre-Anschluss Austria those second two options would probably be a long shot...)
Now that I think of it, I would rather have seen any of those three people play Maria, too.
Is there any other profession where we would excuse poor performance in quite this way? If, for example, someone did brain surgery with neither the skill set nor the training to do it, would we say, "Well that didn't go very well, but she seems like a nice person and I'm sure she did her best, let's give her A for effort?"
I'm not going to get into the whole question of the perks of prettiness and our predisposition as a society to favor the beautiful over the less so, because I think it's a pointless conversation and a waste of time. Beauty is always a subjective judgment anyway, but fairly or unfairly, "pretty people" - however that's defined by the standards of their day - get treated differently, it was ever thus, it always will be, let's all get over it and move on. They have their own problems which the less or other than lovely will never have to deal with.
But here is what I think about Carrie Underwood: she's a conventionally pretty girl with an appealing presence and a very good and/or very marketable voice in her genre. It's not a voice that's suited to the needs of this material or this character, and at the moment - I'm just going to say it - she's a breathtakingly terrible actress. Although she doesn't appear to have any natural aptitude for it, in time she may if she works hard become a better one, I don't know. I do know that she will never get better if she isn't held, or doesn't hold herself, to some kind of artistic standard other than her ability to sell advertising and win ratings.
I am neither a lover nor a hater of La Underwood, but it gives me no joy to see any performer flailing in unfamiliar waters that are too deep for them. However the project came about (did she jump or was she pushed?) Underwood landed in a situation where she couldn't possibly deliver what was called for, and in an iconic role to boot, and surrounding her with a bulwark of heavy hitting Broadway veterans - presumably with the intention of making her look better - in fact had the opposite effect: her inadequacies were unflatteringly highlighted by the comparison.
There was one moment that I hope she remembers and learns from: when McDonald, a great singer-actor, came at her full throttle with "Climb Every Mountain," Underwood started to cry, for real. And right then, for that second, when she was really listening and present and engaged with her fellow actor, she had it. The Rain in Spain. And then we were back in robot hell, but I want to believe she recognized what that felt like when it happened so she can start to build on it and, perhaps, begin to improve her acting skills.
She seems like a nice well-meaning person.
But the arts are not a democracy, and you don't get a medal just for playing.
