The Problem of Maria: Deacon Greg Says “Don’t Solve It”

One of my brothers owns a small community theater, and he always dreads it when they schedule The Sound of Music (or, as both he and Christopher Plummer refer to it, The Sound of Mucus). He has a love/hate relationship with the play, which always sells out but makes him long to follow it up with something a little less gooey and sentimental, like Urinetown.

For this reason, and this reason alone, I would never introduce my brother to Deacon Greg Kandra.

Deacon Greg Kandra has made no secret of the fact that he’s been dreading this new production, (and in fairness, that tense, breathless, and belabored performance by Carrie Underwood that he posted portended nothing good), but now he is really not hiding his disdain!:

A lot of us winced when this project was announced. Now it looks like it’s actually going to happen, airing live on December 5.

Emphasis mine. I read that and all I can hear is, “Oh, the humanity!” And I know that’s precisely his feeling on the matter.

In Greg’s world, all the pretty young performers get one message: “go the full Julie, or go home!”

I’m going to tell the world a big secret: Deacon Greg Kandra is a Julie Andrews fanboy, and for him nothing so thrills as her waspy, precise trills. In his eyes, there is only one Postulant Maria; no other performer can ever live up to a single one of Miss Andrews’ do-re-mi’s, and don’t even get him started on her little goatherds. When it comes the problem of Maria, the only solution is Andrews — and more Andrews, forever Andrews — will-o’-the wisping around the Alpine meadow, or clicking her heels like a vagabond, as she bellows on about confidence.

And then there is. . .Mary Poppins:

For all that he is a Disney fanatic, the Mouse better never consider remaking Mary Poppins, or the good deacon will need meds to cope.

And don’t think he doesn’t still resent Audrey Hepburn for playing Eliza Doolittle in the movie version of My Fair Lady. When Miss Hepburn was later terrorized in Wait Until Dark, Deacon Greg could be heard muttering, “serves her right, Miss Thing and her Marnie-Nixon-dubbing…”

I predict that when the new Sound of Mucus airs, both my brother and Deacon Greg will be instead catching up with The Walking Dead, and imagining flesh-eating zombies munching on whoever it was who thought a remake was necessary.