The Sound of Music (Touring)

A memoir, a Broadway hit, then a film that swallowed it

The show reached Broadway on 16 November 1959 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre: music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, adapted from Maria von Trapp's 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Mary Martin played Maria Rainer. It ran 1,443 performances, closing on 15 June 1963, and took five Tony Awards from nine nominations, sharing Best Musical with Fiorello!

Then came the 1965 film with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, which won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and has since functioned as the default version in most people's heads. Two of its best-known numbers, "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good", were written by Rodgers for the screen and are not in the 1959 stage score at all. Broadway has seen the musical back only once, in Susan H. Schulman's revival with Rebecca Luker, which opened on 12 March 1998 and closed on 20 June 1999 after 533 performances. Everything else — and there has been a great deal of it — has happened on tour, in regional houses and in schools.

O'Brien's second pass at the material

Jack O'Brien, a three-time Tony winner, had already directed a touring Sound of Music in 2015–16, so the current production is his return to a piece he knows from the inside. Concord Theatricals and NETworks Presentations announced it as a new staging, and O'Brien's pitch was specific rather than sentimental: he said he had found conceptions from the original production that had never actually been staged, and wanted to give the show the creative overhaul he thought it deserved — more dramatic, more detailed, more touching than previous attempts.

The company gave its first performances at the Stanley Theatre in Utica, New York, on 5 and 6 September 2025, then opened at the Kennedy Center in Washington from 9 September. The design team is heavyweight: sets by Douglas W. Schmidt, costumes by Jane Greenwood, lighting by Natasha Katz, choreography by Danny Mefford, hair and wigs by Tom Watson, musical supervision by Andy Einhorn, with Jonathan Marro conducting on the road.

The clearest decision is the period. Critics in Boston and Houston both noted that the production places the story in 1930s Austria rather than reproducing the 1965 film's look, and the design follows that through: woven fabric recurs as a motif, mansion walls are formed from enormous panels of floral lace, and the abbey is lit through stained glass. Schmidt's floor-to-ceiling hangings shift the landscape perspectives rather than rolling scenery on and off.

The company, and who is in it this autumn

Maria is played by Cayleigh Capaldi, born in January 2000, an American-British performer and the daughter of the actor and dancer Leigh Zimmerman and the Scottish singer Domenick Allen. Her route to the role was unusual: Celine Dion and Rose in the off-Broadway parody Titanique at the Daryl Roth Theatre in 2023 and 2024, Elsa in Frozen at Tuacahn in Utah from May to October 2024, then the lead in Figaro: an Original Musical at the London Palladium in February 2025. Kevin Earley plays Captain Georg von Trapp, with Nicholas Rodriguez as Max Detweiler, Kate Loprest as Elsa Schraeder and Ariana Ferch as Liesl.

Christiane Noll opened the tour as the Mother Abbess and was still playing it through the spring 2026 dates. Lisa Howard took over from 18 September 2026 at the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas. Howard trained at Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music and has a long Broadway list behind her — The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, South Pacific, 9 to 5, Wicked — and had played the Abbess years earlier at Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. She told an interviewer in October 2026 that the part is the most grounded character she has played, and that she prepares for it in silence rather than with the usual warm-up routine. O'Brien, announcing her, said a production he had invested in was getting a shot of new adrenaline and a chance to redefine itself.

Around the leads the company has turned over steadily, as long-run tours do. Dylan Bradford, already in the cast, moved up to Rolf Gruber from 8 September 2026; Laura Stracko joined as Frau Schmidt; new von Trapp children were announced in March 2026 and again that September. Sydney K. Borchers covers Maria and played the Houston run at the end of September 2026, which is how most audiences discover that the understudy track on this show is strong.

Eighteen months on the road

The 2026 itinerary has been relentless: the Citizens Opera House in Boston to 18 January, the San Diego Civic Theatre to 31 May, Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa to 14 June, Sarofim Hall at Houston's Hobby Center to 4 October, TPAC's Jackson Hall in Nashville from 14 to 18 October, the Orpheum in Minneapolis to 25 October. Ahead lie Appleton, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Chicago, Ottawa, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, New Orleans, Fort Worth, Omaha, Palm Desert, Portland, San Francisco, Spokane, Seattle, Boise and Salt Lake City, with the last scheduled performance in Tempe, Arizona on 27 June 2027.

Capaldi has been the consistent note in the notices. The San Diego critic praised her vocal range and the youth she brings to Maria; the Nashville reviewer wrote that she had his eyes watering. Earley's Captain has divided opinion — Nashville thought his chemistry with Maria worked and compared him favourably with Plummer, while Houston's critic found the romance less convincing than it should be and named it as the production's main weakness. Houston otherwise called the show a pleasant surprise and a solid touring staging that manages to stand apart from the film. Howard's arrival has shifted the balance again: the Nashville review said she was the only performer capable of overshadowing the two leads, and singled out "Climb Ev'ry Mountain". Technical standards have drawn comment in both directions, with Segerstrom's reviewer noting an unusually good balance between voices and orchestra in a house where cast vocals are often buried, and Nashville flagging a radio microphone that cut out during the second act.

Not the film, by design

Anyone arriving with the 1965 running order memorised will be reordered. Howard pointed out that the stage version gives "My Favorite Things" to Maria and the Mother Abbess as a duet rather than to Maria and the children, that Max and Elsa carry considerably more plot and more singing than the film allows them, and that the finale reprises the Abbess's number. The Segerstrom notice made the same observation from the critic's side — songs cut from the film turn up here in different contexts — while still preferring the film overall.

O'Brien's staging adds its own passages rather than only restoring old ones. San Diego's reviewer picked out a silent sequence of wedding preparation and the moment during the family's escape when Nazi imagery unfurls across the stage, which is where the production stops being a children's show about mountains and starts being a 1938 story about a country changing hands.

What happens when the tour and Broadway collide

In June 2026 Lincoln Center Theater announced its 2026–27 season, and The Sound of Music is in it — the musical's second Broadway revival, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, with first preview on 23 March 2027, opening night on 15 April and a seventeen-week run. Jasmine Amy Rogers, Tony-nominated for BOOP!, plays Maria; Lear deBessonet directs; Christopher Gattelli choreographs.

That production has no connection to the tour beyond the title. It is a different director, a different company and a different design, and for roughly ten weeks in spring 2027 the two will run concurrently before O'Brien's company finishes in Tempe on 27 June. For audiences in the thirty-odd cities still to come, the touring version is the one that will reach them.