Local theater vet plays Mother Abbess in touring 'Sound of Music'
When the national tour of “The Sound of Music” plays Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre this week, suburban theater fans should recognize a familiar face in the cast.
Former Chicago actress Melody Betts makes her touring debut as The Mother Abbess in the classic 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical. She has wowed local audiences through the years in acclaimed productions of “Ragtime,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “The Drowsy Chaperone” at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace and the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire.
“I actually didn't have a clue that they were looking for someone to come in and replace Ashley Brown who was away on maternity leave,” said Betts about joining the new “Sound of Music” tour directed by Tony Award-winner Jack O'Brien.
Betts credits her manager in New York who alerted her to audition for the role. Betts had relocated to New York this past September to be in a long-developing off-Broadway production of “Invisible Thread,” and she was surprised to get cast since The Mother Abbess wasn't a role she contemplated before. Particularly challenging is the famous anthem “Climb Every Mountain.”
“I love the music, but it is supposed to be sung a certain way,” said Betts. “This is definitely not your musical theater belt-type of music, so I did have to go back into my bag of tricks and pull out my classical training.”
Another song that Betts enjoys singing is “My Favorite Things,” which surprises some audiences who don't know that it was originally written as a duet between the Mother Abbess and the novice nun Maria (Kerstin Anderson).
Betts is grateful to the tour's producers who opted to be colorblind with the replacement casting. Yet Betts says there's precedent since six-time Tony Award-winning actress Audra McDonald played the Mother Abbess in NBC's “The Sound of Music Live” in 2013.
“For Audra paving the way for women of color to have these roles that we may not on a regular basis be looked at for, I'm extremely grateful to her and I pay homage,” Betts said. “I definitely knew coming in that our audiences were going to be challenged with this change, but it's been received really well.”
Supportive audience comments at the stage door have been great for Betts, though sometimes she goes unnoticed.
“What I look like outside of a nun habit, it's sometimes hard for the audiences to make that connection,” Betts said. “Often when I come out of the stage door, they sometimes don't think I had anything to do with it.”
“The Sound of Music”
Location: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St., Chicago, (800) 775-2000 or
Showtimes: 7:30 Tuesday through Friday (also Sunday, June 12), 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (also Wednesday, June 15); from June 7-19
Tickets: $21-$87