The Sound of Music

This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices of probability density functions?” And instead of cute kids singing about does and deers and stuff, a dozen pale grouchy mathematicians hunched silently at their desks, scribbling furiously to solve the problem before the others and thus gain tenure at M.I.T. There was no singing, and the only line of dialogue was “quit hogging the pencil sharpener.” And would you believe they were forced to rewrite this to make it more commercial? At any rate, Chanhassen will be staging the much better-known “real” version, with the singing and the Von Trapps and the Edelweiss and everything. CDT, 501 W. 78th St., Chanhassen, (952) 934-1525, www.chanhassentheatres.com


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