Mary Poppins

13 September 2005 (Tue), London West End

Mary Poppins is a mess. This is a British version of the sunny Disney movie musical of the 1960s. That film, of course, was based on a series of English novels dealing with an English nanny in an English family living in Edwardian London, and used mainly a British cast. The movie, with its spoonfuls of sugar and jolly holidays, is said to have diverged widely from its source material to create what is essentially an American version of jolly olde England. The original novels were evidently somewhat bleaker in their treatment of the children and their family, so it would be true to say in this case that it is the Americans who distorted the material by unfairly lightening it up. (Indeed, the author of the books is said to have disapproved of the film’s misrepresentation of her work.) So I suppose the British have a right to reclaim the starker vision of the novels in the stage version. While the still-popular Disney film inevitably remained a primary source, Disney had to share producing credits with British mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh, who evidently owns the book rights and ensured that the stage show dipped generously into the novels themselves to reshape the look and feel of the musical and its characters. The creative staff was all-British, including a young composer-lyricist team who added a number of new songs to the familiar score. Yet there is still the lingering sweetness of those old sugary tunes. The question is how these two strands are reconciled. The answer is, not very well. Continue reading →