Fresh-faced, impossibly plucky and brimming with ambition, the 10 finalists of new reality show How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? march onto the stage in Toronto’s CBC building.
They’re singing, appropriately, the song “I’ve Got Confidence” from the movie – gosh darn it, they’ll make you like them! By hook, by crook, or by jaunty Broadway song!
(One suspects, at this point, any naysayers will be immediately strapped into a pair of lederhosen and forced to salute the Austrian flag.)
The series is based on the British show of the same name, which was co-created by Andrew Lloyd Webber to find the next Maria von Trapp for the new London stage show of The Sound of Music.
In the Canadian version, the search is for a Maria to fill the slippers of the Toronto stage production of The Sound of Music, a project from Webber and Mirvish Productions that will run this fall at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre.
The seven-week format is pure reality show: thousands of wannabes try out, after a stint at “Maria School” the pool is narrowed to the Top 10, and Canadians vote in subsequent live-performance episodes for their favourite Maria.
The judges are musical supervisor Simon Lee, vocal coach Elaine Overholt and actor John Barrowman (Torchwood, Doctor Who); the host is Gavin Crawford of This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Though the reality competition skein isn’t new to CBC (previous home-grown shows include The Second City's Next Comedy Legend and Dragon’s Den), Barrowman tells the crowd gathered in the CBC building that Maria is not – it’s NOT! – a talent contest.
“Each of these girls is talented enough to play Maria. It’s just a matter of casting the show.”
The whole thing is a concept any musical theatre buff, like Crawford, will love. “I was super-stoked going in, because I thought it would be a riot,” he says.
“I was probably around four [when I first saw The Sound of Music], and watched it on CBC at Christmastime. I was loving it the entire time! I thought, ‘Who is that woman, and how can I grow up to be her?”
But, if you avidly follow the winner of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? to the theatre, don’t expect a duplicate production of the movie – or even the original play, for that matter.
“They’ve taken some of the elements from the film and the [first] Broadway show and mixed them together,” says Crawford.
“And it’s neat to see a very young girl playing Maria – we don’t really relate that much to class distinctions anymore, but it’s kind of a hard thing to get over when she’s 18 and he’s 43. That’s something we can relate to.”
Will the TV series be a hit? Will the stage show? There’s a lot at stake – financially, in the ratings and in these would-be Marias’ careers.
All you can do is slap on a grin, belt out “I’ve Got Confidence” and hope.
The live episodes of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? will air Sundays at 8 p.m. ET, and the results episodes air Mondays, at 8 p.m. ET on CBC.
Catch up with the first two episodes tonight, June 18, beginning at 8 p.m. ET.
melissa@tvguide.ca
