YORK Stage Musicals director Nik Briggs jumped at the chance to mark the 60th anniversary of The Sound Of Music this spring.

The Grand Opera House will be alive with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical from Friday, with a cast led by Jo Theaker in the “Julie Andrews role” for the story of Maria, the Captain, his many children and their ever-changing surroundings in Austria, as the Nazis’ advance becomes inevitable.

“We’ve been very lucky at York Stage to have been offered many of the premieres in York, whether new shows or Broadway smashes, so we’ve been presenting these big-production musicals for the past five years, but that didn’t mean we didn’t want to do older hit musicals too,” says Nik.

“There was a gap in the diary for such a show, and The Sound Of Music was one that we wanted to do, as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s music is sensational. We got the rights two years ago, and since then it’s been interesting to see what’s been happening in Britain, where we’ve now become a divided nation, which gives our production extra resonance, especially as the stage show is a lot more political than the film version.”

Taking this point further, Nik says: “In the show you have a family that comes together through music, but around them all the secondary characters show a political progression: every time they re-enter the Von Trapp villa, their political convictions have grown stronger.

York Press:

Nik Briggs, centre, in rehearsal for The Sound Of Music

“But we’ve also talked a lot about what we love about this musical, and in my case I love how love wins out over everything else, making them believe they can climb mountains. Even with Rolf Gruber [the delivery boy who fell in love with Liesl Von Trapp until he betrayed her to serve the Nazi Party], he may have the most dramatic transformation, but love always wins out in the end."

It is surprising to learn that The Sound Of Music has never been staged at the Grand Opera House until now: an added honour for York Stage Musicals and leading lady Jo Theaker, from Southbank. “There isn’t only way to play Maria,” she says, determined to step out of Julie Andrews’ long shadow. “It’s so challenging vocally, but my voice is now just at right point for me to do the role, whereas when I was younger, I was not as strong vocally.”

Nik recalls his first encounter with that voice. “I met Jo just before we did Shout!, the Mod musical, when she’d just moved up here from London, and I remember hearing Jo’s voice and thinking, ‘wow, I’ve finally got the soprano we can show off in the Grand Opera House’,” he says.

“To know that I’d found a soprano that could sing this role...as soon as I secured the rights for The Sound Of Music, I knew Jo had to be our Maria.”

Jo could not be more delighted. “What I love about Maria is her free spirit; the way she loves life. When I first thought about the show, I was thinking, ‘she’s fairly boring, she’s a nun’, but actually she’s feisty, she gives everything a go; she changes everybody through that love of life.”

York Stage Musicals present The Sound Of Music, Grand Opera House, York, April 12 to 20, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york