St. Matthew’s Students Shine in Sound of Music Spring Production

By JACQUELINE PRIMO | Reporter

The hills and halls around St. Matthew’s School Sprague Center were alive with the school’s spring musical performance of The Sound of Music on March 11 and 12, put on by students in grades five through eight.
Audience members and St. Matthew’s preschool student Laila Chudgar were bouncing off of their chairs with excitement before the show. A fan of the music, Chudgar couldn’t wait to see the production live for the first time.

“I’m so nervous!” she said eagerly, adding that the song she was most looking forward to was “So Long Farewell.”
The show by producer/director Jean Gaskill featured elaborate, vibrant sets that left the audience feeling transported to the heart of early 1900s Vienna.
Gorgeous period costumes, spot-on choreography, charming acting and true talent all served to create a fun-filled, sentimental and at times moving production that did justice to the 1965 film—celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Chloe Donovan’s strong and lovely voice took center stage for her starring role as Maria (played by Charlotte Washburn in the Wednesday performances), the adventuresome and music-loving nun who leaves the abbey to serve as governess for the wealthy von Trapp family’s seven lovable children.
Peter Sykes was the cavalier and at-first reluctant Captain Georg von Trapp (played by Nick Owens on Wednesday) who slowly came around to Maria’s playful spirit, in turn growing closer to his children and falling in love with Maria.

The audience clapped along to the musical’s signature song “Do Re Mi,” was moved by Flora Troy (Liesl, played by Alyssa Mariscal on Wednesday) and Trey White’s (Rolf Gruber, played by Daniel Leonard on Wednesday) lovely duet “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” and was enchanted by the eighth grade chorus’s dance to “The Lonely Goatherd.”
The large cast and crew was met with a hearty round of applause after the show’s finale “Climb Every Mountain” and the audience left with St. Matthew’s spring musical on the list of its favorite things.