Music man

Barry Williams heads for the hills

by Bill Rodriguez

If there was ever a rosier picture of life than The Sound of Music, it has to be that early '70s paean to wholesome, functional families, The Brady Bunch. How right-on that playing Captain von Trapp in the current road tour is none other than Barry Williams, who was responsible oldest brother Greg in the beloved TV show.

The Sound of Music, in all its sunny splendor, is at the Providence Performing Arts Center through January 14.

The musical is one of those that people know they will either love or hate, an impression -- life-affirming inspiration or bilious treacle -- usually originating with the 1965 Julie Andrews movie. Based on actual events, the story is set in late 1930s Austria. Maria Rainer is a high-spirited young woman who wins the heart of a widowed naval captain and his gaggle of seven entertaining children, who are popular as a singing group. When the Germans invade Austria, the Nazis want to re-commission von Trapp, so they plan a dangerous escape over the mountains to Switzerland.

Speaking from Cincinnati, six cities into a 24-city tour, Williams says he's still getting a kick out of playing the austere Austrian.

"It's enjoyable. There are a lot of layers to El Capitan, and it's challenging every night to find that arc," he declares. "That's one of the things I'm grateful for 15 years of acting classes for. You get to do all of that stuff and then you pull out your trunk and try different gradations of it."

In addition to performing on tour in The City of Angels and in the lead of Pippin, Williams has plenty of TV and musical theater credits. He also co-authored the 1992 best-selling memoir Growing Up Brady. Williams is more accustomed to talking about the TV show, which ran on ABC from 1969 to 1974. So accustomed that he can rattle off a whole press release worth of facts and stats about it.

"The Brady Bunch has enjoyed a remarkable history of popularity. It has never been off the air in 32 years. It is the number one rated show on Nick at Nite. It plays in some 42 different countries. Each individual episode has aired more than 100,000 times." He takes a breath. "We've had six different series made out of the show, five specials. We've crossed all mediums, from television to movies to plays to books. We have been the subject of skits, of pop culture reference."

The premise of the show was that a woman with three girls and a man with three boys merged into a single, happy family, with a wise-cracking maid acting as referee for their disputes. Why was the show so popular?

"I know what people tell me. People tell me that they could relate to the characters. They could relate to the stories. That it was like comfort food. It made them feel better about themselves," Williams explains.

How does he react to spoofs that make fun of the show as simplistic, the family's problems so easily solved?

"I think life is ever so much more enjoyable with a good, healthy sense of humor," he replies. "I've done parodies of my own, so I'm very comfortable with that. When you're watching Saturday Night Live you're expecting to see Saturday Night Live, and when goofing on The Brady Bunch is a part of that, I'm usually laughing right along with it."

Reality does have the habit of intruding into frothy family entertainment that is examined too closely. The Maria of the musical may have been all sweetness and light, but the real one was a bit of a Leona Helmsley, according to some of the tongue-lashed help at the mountain resort the von Trapps still run in Vermont.

Similarly, the beaming problem-solver Greg Brady never got the headache that Barry Williams has had to endure with this show. In November he was picketed in Pittsburgh for headlining the non-union production. Williams signed on after LA Law's Corbin Bernstein quit the show under union pressure. In a public statement, Actors' Equity president Patrick Quinn sniffed: "Conveniently, Williams dropped his membership so that he can draw a big paycheck while his fellow performers work for substandard wages." (According to the union, road show producer Troika Entertainment is paying company members as little as $400 per week, compared to the Equity minimum of $1180.) Equity has done its best to embarrass the man who, in an online chat room interview, has spoken of "those good ol' Brady family values -- you know `all for one and one for all.' "

"Interestingly, most of my actor friends support my position and understand what I've tried to do. They also, almost without exception, experienced extreme difficulties and inconsistencies with the Actors Equity association," Williams maintains. "Did I get heat from my actor friends? No. Is Actors Equity putting heat on me? Yes. And I think it's seriously misplaced."

They gave him only one choice, he says -- quitting either the show or the union.

"I repeatedly attempted personally and through my representatives to reach some kind of agreement that would be non-offensive to the union, just as other unions have reached agreements -- directors, producers, costumers, set designers," he says. "I went back and forth. It was a very difficult decision. At one point I told Troika that I didn't think that I could go forward and I did not want to pursue our conversations."

But Williams is in the perfect show to escape such uncomfortable realities. When the hills are alive with the sound of music, it's easier to set aside problems -- for an evening at least.