A Civil World. Off-topic discussions on a variety of topics. > Time For a Coffee Break!

Mary Poppins The Musical. I saw it and LOVED it.

(1/1)

Yarnspinner:
I'm just busting to tell about this play!  A friend of mine works for an organization that sponsors Broadway bus trips each year.  One year it was The Lion King, another year it was Spamalot. They make the reservations a year in advance. 

This time I was skeptical.  Although the movie is charming, it was never my favorite (though I loved all the parts featuring wingadingdingy Van Dyke) and I never read the books (shame on me!)  But I always enjoy a trip to the Big Apple, so I paid my money and waited a year for the big day. 

E-Hellions, it was fabulous!  Instead of trying to recreate the movie version, the creators read the first three books and made a completely new story using some of the happenings there.  Mary Poppins now has to face off against Mr. Banks' old nanny (who is evil) and Mr. Banks isn't quite the cranky pants he was in the movie.  Instead of being a bubble headed feminist (and I don't mean all feminists are bubble headed--I mean Mrs. Banks was bubble headed) Mrs. Banks is a former actress with serious intimacy issues with her husband (There's a lot of dark grown up stuff in this story). 

The leads were excellently cast--Ashley Brown makes you forget Julie Andrews ever won an Oscar for the role and Gavin Lee is a terrific Bert.  (He has a tap dance number in Act II that blew the audience away.)
The rest of the cast is excellent,the singing is on the operatic side and when you see what they've done with Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious you will cheer. 

Mary Poppins flies, Bert tap dances on the ceiling, the kitchen destroys itself, then rebuilds itself.  Statues talk, people appear out of thin air and...oh, it was simply marvelous!  Best of all, there were lots of children watching who were VERY WELL BEHAVED.  It was amazing to see these kids being so polite and quiet and still getting worked up into a frenzy every time Mary took to the sky. 

If you have the time and can scrape up the cash, and are planning on a visit to NYC in the near future, and you want to take in a show, I have to tell you, this one would be hard to beat.  By the end, I was wiping my eyes from the sheer emotion of it all.

(And because I came down with the stomach flew four days prior to the play, I was chewing immodium like candy...I was NOT missing it.  Not for stomach flu, not for the world.)

I haven't got enough adjectives to describe the wonderfulness of it!

Mrs. Eclipse:
Sounds cool!  I never liked the movie, it was too slow-paced for me.

How about the songs?  Same?  Different?  Absent?

NEDESAPIO:
That's great to hear, LilySuch!  I love the movie but am very glad to know the stage musical does something different than the movie does.  But tell me one thing:  is Uncle Albert (the chronic laugher, played by Ed Wynn in the movie) in the stage musical?  How about his song, "I Love to Laugh"?

He was always my favorite.

Yarnspinner:
Well, they've kept most of the songs, but they are in a new order.  "Supercalifragilistic...etc" now takes place in a shop where conversations can be purchased (and apparently this is where the word was originally used in the books).  "Jolly Holiday" happens much earlier on in the musical--it's the first really big number.  They DO jump into a chalk painting, but there's no race.  Instead the kids meet up with a statue of a demi-god from Greek mythology who is looking for his father (who happens to be Poseidon).  The parents' parts are much larger.  "Spoon Full of Sugar" is used during a scene in which the kids have tried to help set up for a tea party their mother is hosting for a bunch of snobby folk--and they completely trash the kitchen.

The plot revolves (loosely) around Mr. Banks' worries about his image, how his wife's past as an actress will affect that career and what he fears will happen when he turns down a prospective bank client to help someone who isn't as rich, but has plans that are sound.  Mixed in with this is his desire that h is children should be taught by the nanny of HIS youth (who is a nasty person).  Jane and Michael are MUCH more ill behaved than in the film and there is a bigger hint of a relationship between Bert and Mary.

And I am sorry to tell you NEDESAPIO, that Uncle Albert is not in the film.  I was so disappointed by that and by the disappearance of my favorite ballad "Stay Awake".  Still, there is so much else added in, you almost don't miss those two numbers.  There are also new numbers added in ("No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane", "Brimstone and Treacle" are the two that come to mind).  It was the "step In Time" number that blew my mind.  The sweeps had tap shoes that sounded all the way out on the street.  And when Gavin Lee walked up the side of the stage and out onto the top of the proscenium and proceeded to tap dance upside down for three minutes, he brought the whole house down. 

Of course, there were many excited and delighted children when, at the finale, Mary Poppins took flight--straight into and above the audience, up into the mezzanine (where we were) and finally flew straight up, past the balconies, where she disappeared.  Absolutely magical.

NEDESAPIO:
And I am sorry to tell you NEDESAPIO, that Uncle Albert is not in the film.

In the stage musical, you mean?  Awww...Well, I suppose it would be kind of hard to do the "laughing on the ceiling" bit onstage, though they might have altered it a little from the film.

Anyway, I'm sure it's a great production, even with the absence of old, Victorian, eccentric Uncle Albert.

Navigation

[0] Message Index