I see where the stage version of Mary Poppins has returned to the West End to largely favorable reviews. It’s hard to know how it will fare given its unexpectedly short run last time around; three years would qualify as a hit for most shows, but hopes had been riding particularly high for Poppins given the potent title, family-friendly content and combined power of mega-producers Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, who must have thought they had another The Lion King or Phantom (respectively) on their hands. Still, it did well enough, and it’s no surprise to see them coming back for another try.

I was less taken by the show, at least in its original production, due to its ham-handed approach to the material. In trying to bring together the original British novels and Disney’s lighter film version, the show loses its way entirely. I wrote here and here:

The story in the movie is simple enough. The father seeks a nanny in order to instill discipline in his children, who he considers frivolous for seeking trivial pleasures like outings and treats. He feels that a British home should be run, like a bank, with “precision”, and that a nanny should be a “general” who will “mould the breed”. He is not unkind but just unimaginative, so caught up in his workaday banking world that he thinks he has his children’s best interests at heart by disciplining them; for example, he truly believes that the prospect of investing their money will prove more exciting to them than giving that money to feed the birds. The nanny he hires for the children – Mary Poppins, of course – takes the rather different path of feeding rather than suppressing their “childish” imaginations, and in doing so awakens the father’s own awareness of life’s possibilities. That is, it is the father himself who is most changed by the nanny as he learns to appreciate life for its frivolities. He is an Everyman, his foibles completely understandable and human. . . The lesson is not that children must be more like adults, but that adults must not lose the sense of wonder that they had when they were children.

The stage musical has a significantly different perspective, which it fails to justify in either the lazy text or pedestrian new songs. The links above discuss that in detail, so I’ll leave it at that for now. The new production does offer the pleasure of the young actor Charlie Stemp (as Bert), whose star-making performance in Half a Sixpence was alone worth the price of the ticket. But I notice plenty of empty seats left on the booking site and can’t see where this time will be any more successful than before. All in all, I’ll save my £177.50 (not a typo) and stick with the film.