My quick thoughts on Sound of Music Live

Yes it has aired and re-aired by now, but I'm still mulling it over.  As are many people that are musical theater lovers that we know.  So because everything that there is to be said is said I'll bullet point my main points: 

• Carrie Underwood did fine.  Singing.  Acting?  Not so much.  It was obvious she wasn't comfortable.  Poor thing was outta he league except with The Lonely Goatherd, but she is a country singer.  I hope she's proud of herself though for stepping outside of her box and doing something new.  Before she does something like it again though, she needs Acting 101.  
• I feel bad for Stephen Moyer - all you can see is Bill from True Blood and him going "Sookie!"
• Audra McDonald.  I heart her.  Seemed to young to be the all knowing Mother Abbess, but at least she could sing.  
• Laura Benanti.  Show-stealer that one!  She was a treat from the Elsa in the movie that's for sure.  I loved the catty attitude.  
• From the very beginning I was confused, considering I read nothing about this beforehand.  Why was Audra singing "My Favorite Things" at the beginning?  Well thanks to the super helpful Playbill live tweeting, I quickly found out that it was  because this was based on the *stage* version.  Cue a much more interested household on our end!  
• I thoroughly enjoyed the song "No Way To Stop It" with Christian Borle and Laura Benanti - not in the movie and a "pleasant" surprise of a song despite the subject matter.
• There was ZERO love between Underwood and Moyer.  I did a "oh now I'm suppose to believe they fell in love.  Okay...".  

To sum up - I didn't hate it but I was far from loving it.  Not to mention I learned a lot about the stage production, which we're seeing later in 2014 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  It's never been a favorite musical of mine, but I appreciated it highly, and this production spent a lot of money, but they missed out on some casting opportunities.  

But in the end, my favorite Tweet of the night came from Lin-Manuel Miranda (of In The Heights and Bring It On):

This is what it boils down to in the end.  People watched a musical, and if they turned it on just for Underwood, then they saw their first musical production perhaps, and I like to think that we hooked a few new lovers to the theater!