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MUSICAL
Mary Poppins ★★★★★
Book by Julian Fellowes, music and lyrics by Richard and Robert Sherman, George Stiles, and Anthony Drewe
Her Majesty’s Theatre, from February 3
Has it really been 13 years since Melbourne last saw Mary Poppins? My memory of it is as crisp as the super-nanny’s diction. It feels like yesterday that Poppins swooped onto the stage under her famous green parrot umbrella, magic and mayhem streaming in her wake, and this delightful production remains (as Poppins sings of herself in a moment of vanity) practically perfect, in every way.
Stefanie Jones stars as the latest incarnation of Mary Poppins.Credit:Wayne Taylor
The show does something rather un-Disney for a Disney musical: it retreats from cartoonish sentimentality. There’s still sugar, of course there is, but the spoonful is more precisely measured than the much-loved 1964 film with Julie Andrews, and the uncanniest of nannies is a subtly different creature.
You wouldn’t want to make an enemy of this Mary Poppins (Stefanie Jones), any more than you’d risk getting on Willy Wonka’s wrong side. There’s no telling what might happen. She’s closer to P. L. Travers’ books in this version – prim and mysterious, ready with a tart riposte at behaviour unbecoming, and possessed of an absolute authority that proceeds from embracing the chaos of life.
Poppins always appears when she’s most needed, and she descends on 17 Cherry Tree Lane to a household in disarray. Despite Mr Banks (Tom Wren) thinking of himself as a “sovereign” – in an uncomfortably accurate depiction of Edwardian patriarchy – the family suffers from an authority vacuum.
The house at 17 Cherry Tree Lane is brought to life in an entirely new way in the unmissable stage production. Credit:Wayne Taylor
The Banks children, Jane and Michael (played by precociously talented Harriet Adler and Sebastian Sero on opening night), have driven all their previous nannies mad, but they’ve met their match in Mary Poppins, who leads them on a series of wild adventures, instilling wonder with a brilliantly devised suite of spectacle and stage illusion.
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Statues come to life and perform masterful ballet routines. Kitchen havoc erupts through hilarious slapstick, before Poppins magically restores order with a spoonful of sugar.