Mary Poppins
There must be an East wind blowing in Los Angeles because Mary Poppins has blown into town and can she can be seen nightly on stage at the Ahmanson Theatre. I refer, of course to the musical version of the popular children’s stories by P. L. Travers. Travers wrote a total of eight books about Mary Poppins who she presents as a vain, acerbic, no-nonsense but magical nanny who comes to work at the Banks household (which has lost a succession of nannies) because the children misbehaved so. Mary Poppins puts all that right through magic where she makes the ordinary seem wonderful and chores a matter of a wave of her hand.
Along came Disney and in 1964 made a musical out of the stories and made a movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke with songs by the Sherman Brothers. Flash forward some twenty years and Disney has transformed the stories again into a live musical but not without extensive rewrites and a bunch of new songs. Travers explicitly stated in her will her displeasure over the movie and stipulated that no American would ever get their hands on the property. Over the years people have wondered why there hadn’t been a stage version but now you know why. What Disney has done is hire a British director, (Richard Eyre of the National Theatre in London), a famous British choreographer Matthew Bourne, a British producer Cameron Mackintosh, sets and costumes by British designer Bob Crowleyhttp://www.broadwayla.org/production/photo.asp?ID=19, and a new set of British composers George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. The result is, well, British though Disney has still managed to soften Mary’s character to make her cuddlier. The consequence is a longish evening because you are hearing two scores, the insipid Sherman Brothers songs (a must because they are so known), and all that new material. But the show is still a triumph.
Eyre’s direction is spot-on and he has managed to hold onto some of the stories grit. The dances by Bourne are brilliant. The magical set and set pieces (statues that come to life and dance), a kitchen disaster that is all put back together in a flash, are just two of the many wonderful touches.
The cast is also super with the beauteous Ashley Brown as Mary. I have seen her recently perform another Disney heroine, Snow White, at Disney Hall and she doesn’t disappoint. The Bert, Gavin Lee, is from the British production and captures that Music Hall feeling. Together their acting is seamless and you can tell they are at ease with their parts and each other. The rest of the cast is very good too with standouts include Karl Kenner as Mr. Banks, Megan Oesterhaus as his wife, Valerie Boyle as Mrs. Brill, and the exquisite Ellen Harvey as Miss Andrew. This is a wonderful show for the holiday season and timely too as it explores the corruption in the financial world. Mary Pippins plays at the Ahmanson Theatre until Feb. 7.