Played on a handsome conventional set with hints of the Austrian alps visible upstage, this is a straightforward production that focuses formerly on fine singing and very cute children.

Amy Lehpamer leads the way as the wayward novice Maria who captures the hearts of the von Trapp children and their straight-backed father Georg, played fairly blandly by Cameron Daddo.

Veteran stage and screen personality Lorraine Bayly drew an ovation when she first appeared as the long-suffering housekeeper Frau Schmidt.

This extraordinarily popular musical features universally-loved songs like “Do Re Mi” and “My Favourite Things,” but there are also several more religious songs, such as “Dixit Dominus”, “Alleluia” and “Climb Every Mountain”, and it is in these numbers that the full magnificence of the vocal chorus comes to the fore, with Opera Australia principal Jacqueline Dark as the Mother Superior.

In the end this production stands out because of the lively performances by the young actors playing the smaller von Trapp children, often accompanied by rhythmical clapping from the audience.

If it all sounds a bit too saccharine to be true, it isn’t. The darker second half of “The Sound of Music” allows for some nerve-wracking moments even for those of us who know the von Trapps will successfully escape across the mountains to Switzerland. The scene in which, while performing at the Salzburg Music festival, they make their exit in full view of the audience, is most affecting.

It’s a cliché, but this production of “The Sound of Music” is one for the whole family.