How do you problem like maria

After coming in third place on the show, Siobhan went on to play the role of Patty Simcox in the rival of Grease at the Piccadilly Theatre. She also understudied the roles of Marty and Sandy and later returned to the production to take over the role of Sandy.

She was most recently seen on our screens in the Netflix series, Grace and Frankie. After the reality programme, Aoife was cast as the alternate to Maria in the production at the London Palladium, playing the role twice a week with Fisher doing six. She also played Roxie in the musical Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre, she played the role in and She now is a vocal coach in Ireland. Simona reached the audience voting stages but was not selected as one of the two finalists. Belinda went into the cast of The Phantom of the Opera in London's West End as a swing after being eliminated from the show.

Belinda was an Artist in Residence on Garsington Opera's Opera for Al l project - which aims to bring opera to isolated coastal communities. She has most recently been touring with Andre Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra with whom she has been singing since Laura Sicurello. She has been featured in many pantomimes, including Dick Whittington at the Greenwich Theatre in , Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in and At the end, Maria herself comes running into the abbey, hair a mess, late for prayer again, and stops short in front of the sisters who stop singing.

She tidies herself and tries to walk away with decorum, then the nuns resume singing the final "impossible problem" line: "how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? The entire scene must be taken together, along with prior scenes which establish that Maria herself IS the problem that the nuns do not know how to solve.

It is certainly not standard English to write or speak the way this sentence is written, but in a musical for stage or film, the rules do not always apply. In fact, it is in large part, the breaking of rules -- like solemn nuns randomly breaking into song -- that makes the musical theatre genre so unique and engaging.

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Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 2 years, 3 months ago. Active 2 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 7k times. Improve this question. Christian Macht. Christian Macht Christian Macht 4 4 silver badges 7 7 bronze badges. Where is the problem? So, "How do you solve a problem like Maria does? It's very contextual. Consider, "How would you bake a cake like Maria? FWIW, I assumed the "like Maria would" meaning when seeing the subject line, but thought it would be fun to consider that Maria is like the problem - it turned out that was backwards compared to the intended reading.

But I've never seen the film. It's clearly implied from context that Maria is the problem, but the language is ambiguous. I had the same problem with a line from the song She's a Maniac : " And she's dancing like she's never danced before.

Sometimes you have to read the context to understand what's intended. Nobody is discussing intonation. Although not a full answer by itself, it is especially important outside of song. Music often ignores or significantly changes tonal emphasis, delays and accents. Using the example from the previous comment, if pauses are placed between words and the voice raised with exclamation at the end of " Tonal changes can still confuse non-native speakers.

Show 6 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. You're right: "How do you solve a problem like Maria? Improve this answer. Context is key, but would you consider the popularity of this musical to have coined an idiom of it?

Compare it to the line, "How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? You can't, Maria can't, and Maria is a problem that cannot be solved or moreover solve for herself. Hypothetical arguments in The Sound of Music [ english. See also my comment at OP. JanusBahsJacquet Your first examples of "like" as an adjective strikes me as archaic and I'm 61 - BrE , the second is old-fashioned and I think only applies to the phrase "like as not".

The third on the other hand strikes me as modern slang but that may be my age showing. The second one is still alive and kicking, but only dialectally for some reason, I hear it in a Yorkshire accent — not sure if that has any basis in fact , and the third is definitely a more recent phenomenon. Show 1 more comment. Barmar Barmar If it helps, another rewording could be "How do you solve a Maria-like problem? Kris The default interpretation depends on the verb.

If you asked "How do you paint like Rembrandt? Barmar but "how do you paint a masterpiece like Rembrandt? Maybe the 17th century Dutch got into bodypainting early. Add a comment. The nuns are using a simile. They are likening Maria to a problem that needs to be solved.

You could say: How do you solve a problem like Global Warming? Barmar Very good, similes are common in figurative speech, which are an important aspect of poetry and music. Just using the word "like" doesn't make it a simile. In this case, "like" means "such as", not "resembling". They're not saying that Maria is like a problem; they're saying that she is a problem.

DavidRicherby - Good point, though I would still content that Maria is not literally a problem, and that the language here is metaphorical.

Maria causes a problem. If interactions with Maria are, in general, problematic, it's perfectly reasonable to say that Maria is a problem, rather than being more specific about what aspect of Maria causes problems. Except that, 99 times out of a hundred, you'd say "How would you solve problems like Steve? Ray Butterworth Ray Butterworth 2, 1 1 gold badge 8 8 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. Er, the whole point of "fruit flies like a banana" is that it means both "bananas are enjoyed by fruit flies" and "fruit moves through the air like bananas do".

DavidRicherby, "Fruit" can be a transitive verb too, in this case as an imperative: "Fruit flies in the same way you would fruit a banana. Ray I don't think you can do that. It's not actually very ambiguous. Although it could mean "How do you solve a problem like Maria does? One would normally ask "How do you solve problems like Maria does? We are envious of George's skills. Laurence Payne Laurence Payne 3 3 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges.