Carrie Underwood Is This Generation's Fraulein Maria
As someone who grew up on annual viewings of The Sound Of Music and can sing the entire soundtrack (and will, at the slightest and most polite expression of interest), the news that NBC is staging a live version of the stage show on December 5 has hit me hard. It's not just that the network has just shown itself incapable of showing the proper respect to the lavish Broadway series it already had (R.I.P., Smash), though that is a big part of it. It's that it's cast as its Fraulein Maria -- the role played in the film by Julie Andrews -- American Idol winner and country music star Carrie Underwood.
Admittedly, I'm not that familiar with Underwood's singing career, though I am sure she, like Andrews, boasts a four-octave range and formal vocal training. As for her acting experience: I did see her play a Ted (Josh Radnor) girlfriend on How I Met Your Mother, and if she was not terribly convincing as a frosty pharmaceutical rep, maybe that means that in a role that's the exact opposite -- a warm, vivacious nun -- she'll do great!
And yet...there are other performers who are more or less in Underwood's cohort that I wish producers had considered.
Romola Garai
Age Relative To Underwood: Same age.
Pros: Though she's Irish, her luminous Aryan looks would easily let her pass as an Austrian nun.
Cons: She can probably sing, but we don't know that for sure.
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... Wicked. Assuming she can sing. Which she probably can.
Sutton Foster
Age Relative To Underwood: 8 years older.
Pros: She's a Tony-winning Broadway vet who's headlined Thoroughly Modern Millie and Anything Goes; Bunheads has prepared audiences to see her surrounded by impressionable young people who look up to her in a quasi-parent/child relationship.
Cons: Though she doesn't really look her age, it might be hard to buy her as a fresh-faced, very naïve...well, virgin. Not to put too fine a point on it.
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... My Fair Lady! Eliza Doolittle is also a younger woman's role, but since she's been roughed up a bit from street life, it could work.
Mae Whitman
Age Relative To Underwood: 6 years younger.
Pros: Playing Ann "Egg" Veal on Arrested Development prepared her to play a somewhat mousy young women with hidden reserves of passion. And, she can sing.
Cons: ...Her?
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... The Rocky Horror Show, for which she got a little practice last fall in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower.
Cristin Milioti*
Age Relative To Underwood: 3 years younger.
Pros: Like Foster, she also has Broadway experience (she played The Girl in Once), and the kind of face that can be made up to be vampish or down to be endearingly approachable; we saw both when she guest-starred as Abby Flynn on 30 Rock.
Cons: Is the world ready for a brunette Maria???
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... Why not Once? Maybe not at Christmastime -- it's a bit subdued for that -- but the show was well reviewed and people outside New York might like the chance to see it.
*I was writing this last night on the west coast at the exact time that the east coast was seeing her make a pivotal guest appearance in a certain Monday-night show's season finale, so clearly this is a star on the rise!
Jenny Lewis
Age Relative To Underwood: 7 years older.
Pros: Endowed by the Creator with the voice of an angel; would have picked up a few tips on how to manage a huge brood of kids from Shelley Long on Troop Beverly Hills.
Cons: Those bangs are probably covering up the evidence of some hard living.
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... Annie. Granted, she's too old for the title role, but she could be a bomb-ass Miss Hannigan.
Michelle Trachtenberg
Age Relative To Underwood: 3 years younger.
Pros: As we saw on Gossip Girl, she specializes in indeterminate accents.
Cons: The audience isn't really supposed to want to murder Fraulein Maria.
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... Grease. This bitch has Rizzo written all over her.
Maria Thayer
Age Relative To Underwood: 7 years older.
Pros: When I said that Sutton Foster doesn't look her age, I was more than 50% being polite. Thayer really doesn't look her age. And she is so peppy and cute that she would be a total natural turning curtains into play clothes. Plus she has stage experience (doing comedy, but still).
Cons: And this is another case where we're going on faith that she can probably sing okay.
But Maybe, Now, Instead She Can Appear In NBC's Hypothetical Future Live Production Of... Hairspray. Put her in a blonde wig and she's a total Penny Pingleton.