You Probably Want Me To Tell You That Carrie Underwood Was Bad, But I’m Not Going To

Last night, on NBC, the hills were alive (or a lie, depending on whether there was an enunciation issue or I was hallucinating/deaf, both of which are totally possible) with The Sound of Music.

So was the show. Three hours of non-stop singing, dancing, nunnery, Nazis, Swiss Miss outfits and strict Teutonic parenting performed completely live, just like a real Broadway show. A real Broadway show, except with an audience who, instead of applauding and laughing and sending waves of kinetic energy though the atmosphere for the actors to play off of, were sitting at home writing snide things on Twitter they’d thought up days in advance. (I admit being slightly guilty of this myself. The snark, if not the pre-planning. I can’t plan anything; it’s sort of a disability, although not the kind that gets you extra time on standardized tests or a letter from my shrink saying Charlie, my spaniel mix, is a service dog and I should get to bring him anywhere I want.)

Theater fans and practitioners are a nitpicky lot, but it seemed like the big guns had their sights firmly trained on multi-platinum country star Carrie Underwood, who had been brought in, amidst much pomp and ceremony, to play Maria. It’s understandable. After all, we’ve been burned before by an American Idol-type self-consciously slumming it with show tunes (less than one year on, the nation’s show queens are still living rough in their McPheeMA trails, some of which have been converted into makeshift piano bars). Broadway doesn’t go for pills and booze, but it really doesn’t go for lip-synching and AutoTune. Could she pull it off? And how mercilessly might we terrorize her if (when) she didn’t?

I’ll admit it started off shaky. I’ve always liked Carrie, even voted for her a couple of times when she was on Idol. (Forgive the Peggy Noonan-like phrasing there; country music does that to me.) I crank the radio up whenever one of her songs comes on and I sing (or at least think) “Jesus Take the Wheel” pretty much every time I get on the freeway. But I’d be falling down on my job as a self-appointed critic if I didn’t point out that her take on the opening title song was…underwhelming. There was the aforementioned diction issue, some awkward bumbling through a grove of fake trees (not that you could replicate Robert Wise’s iconic opening tracking shot to the film), and just general tightness. “Open up!” I shouted at the screen, just as the lark was learning to pray. “Relax your neck and open the fuck up!”

And then there was the talking-acting. Oy, the talking-acting on the first scene. Carrie seemed to have purged her singing style of home-fried country ticks, but her speaking voice had the exact accent everybody tries to do when they’re in Oklahoma!, which made me think two things: 1) Carrie Underwood should be Laurey in Oklahoma! Carrie Underwood basically is Laurie in Oklahoma! and 2) I would actually be pretty damn interested in seeing a remake of Oklahoma! cast entirely with country stars, and not just because I have a guilty secret crush on Blake Shelton, but a lot because of that, and also, I think that the alternate universe that country stars seem to live in is basically acting out Oklahoma! on and endless loop, just like the rest of us in big cities are always secretly pretending we’re in Cabaret.

Anyway, it wasn’t very Austrian. Not that I expected her to talk like Arnold Schwarzengger. I did expect her to not sound like she was reading of a teleprompter, but you know what Jerry, perhaps let’s not ask for the moon when we have the stars.

Because the stars were out last night, if you were looking for them. They were there when Audra McDonald opened her mouth, placed those kitten whiskers on the horizon line, and let loose with the most glorious coloratura version of “My Favorite Things” ever committed to stage or film. (A small dramaturgical question, though, due to the production’s restoration to its original stage version placement: if the Mother Abbess “sang that song when she was a little girl,” does that mean those are not, in fact, Maria’s favorite things, but rather just a generic list of things that everybody is supposed to like? And how are little girls who say, hate ponies, or prefer sachertorte to apple strudel, supposed to feel? And why don’t people in Austria train their dogs not to bite nuns????) And her golden, glorious, deist wondrousness seemed to swim right into Carrie Underwood’s throat, like that little ball of light that Ursula the Sea Witch swallows and then Ariel can’t talk anymore, except Audra is the opposite of Ursula, she’s the good Ursula, and so everyone that’s around her just sings more beautifully and more like themselves?

Because after that, Carrie sounded amazing. And the talking parts didn’t matter so much. It’s called The Sound of Music, not The Sound of Conversation. It’s the music that’s supposed to be transcendent here, not the words that string it together. Captain von Trapp isn’t so much moved by Maria’s angry account of all the things he’s never noticed about his children, but by the sound of them singing together, in tight, golden, familial harmonies his ears and heart had forgotten existed. That’s the real thaw, the real engine of the show, the way that the pure beauty of sound can change us profoundly, can open our souls, can heal us.

Carrie Underwood understands that. She may be a weird, robotic, musical savant who can only communicate effectively in song, but who gives a shit? Who’s to say that isn’t exactly what Maria—who, as the nuns will tell you, clearly had some difficulties with normal social interaction—is all about? We saw that understanding in her sweet, flat, doll-like face when she was singing, but most of all, we saw it when she was listening to sing “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” which can be either the most beautiful or most irritating song in the universe, depending on whose singing it. Since this time it was Audra McDonald, one of the greatest musical talents of this or any century, you can guess how it turned out. Carrie was weeping, but they were her tears, not Maria’s. She was being healed, she was finding the courage to go on, to make it through to the thankless, glorious end.

And I loved her for it. Our hearts will be blessed indeed.