Here's the quickie review of the musical version of Mary Poppins which I saw last evening down at the Music Center here in Los Angeles: There are many moments of wonderful dancing and staging, most of which key off songs and scenes from the original, beloved movie. The cast is quite talented, especially Gavin Lee, the fellow who plays Bert the Chimney Sweep. Much of the audience loved it…and those are about all the good things I can find to say about it. Because though I went in wanting very much to have a good time, I was among those who didn't.
And now here's the longer part where I try to explain why. This may not be easy because I haven't completely figured it out yet for myself. I know it was not because they didn't follow the film slavishly. It's a classic but it's a classic of the screen, not of the stage. Alterations and additions are to be expected…but I guess I didn't expect them to remove the heart.
P.L. Travers, author of the books, famously disliked what Mr. Disney did with her property and declined all further offers for sequels. Shortly before she died in 1996, she okayed this stage production on the condition that it be done wholly by British-born talent and by no one who'd been involved in the movie. That meant that Richard and Robert Sherman, who wrote the celebrated film score, were excluded from contributing the new material. That's a shame because they might have infused the show with some of the personality that made the film work. As it stands, it's missing that vital element. This Mary Poppins doesn't twinkle. She lands with a thud…and I think I'll put up a SPOILER ALERT so I can continue this without giving away any surprises to those who may still go to see it…
There. Now that we're alone, let me elaborate. I didn't like Mary Poppins in this show. I don't mean the actress, Ashley Brown, who is quite lovely and gifted. I mean what her Mary Poppins does. She's obnoxious and not in a good way. She also does all these campy, exaggerated moves as if to say, "Ain't I quite a character?" Her premise is that she comes to a family that needs her, works her magic on them and then flies away when they no longer need her and her job there is done. That might make her a fascinating person if she actually did that.
Instead, she leaves at the end of Act One for no visible purpose other than they needed an emotional moment there. Then she comes back in Act Two for no particular reason other than that the show is named Mary Poppins so she has to come back. At the end, she leaves again — this time, for good — because her job is done there…but what did she do?
Oh, she showed two children a wonderful time and sang a lot for us and fixed broken dishes and such…but I don't get that she did any particular good for the family other than to chase away her Satanic temporary replacement. While hanging around, telling us how perfect she is, she has very little to do with the main storyline, which is about how Mr. Banks is worried about his future with the bank where he works. This is because he didn't give some investor a loan that would have paid off big for the bank. At the end, it turns out that his job is saved (and he even gets a huge raise) because that investor's business wasn't successful, after all but another loan he made — this one to a better human being — is paying off big.
That's the resolution to the central plot and Mary doesn't really make it happen. Heck, Mr. Banks barely makes it happen. To the extent he does, it's because he's a man with the wisdom to judge people as people, not as business deals…but Mary doesn't solve problems by understanding people. She solves them with magic tricks.
The big new song she sings is called "Anything Can Happen If You Let It," and that's kind of the theme of the show. I guess my problem is that I don't believe that for a minute. I think good things (not "anything") can happen if you make them happen. But if your kitchen's a mess and you're waiting for a magic nanny to come in and blink and fix it all up, your kitchen's going to stay pretty damn dirty.
I could maybe, stretching a point, buy that she has a positive influence on the Banks family because her witchcraft opens their eyes to possibilities and stimulates their imaginations…but I didn't get that out of the show. It's there in the movie. When her magical presence descends on the Banks house, that Mr. Banks becomes less stuffy and more caring and you see an actual change in the man because of his proximity to the title character. He decides there are more important things in life than running a stuffy old bank. He decides he'd rather go out and fly a kite…a true personality transformation. I didn't see any of that on stage. On stage, Mr. Banks is a whiny jerk from start to finish. He just becomes a financially-secure whiny jerk for reasons that have little to do with Mary Poppins.
There's a moment at the very end that really sums up how I felt about the show. Mary Poppins flies out over the audience and up into the heavens (i.e., the ceiling of the Ahmanson Theater) and she even came pretty darn close to where we were sitting, in the second row of the lower balcony.
Now, this is not a new stage trick. For the last few decades, it's been pretty standard in big productions of Peter Pan for Peter to take his/her final bow by flying out over the house and throwing fairy dust over us all…and call me a sap if you must but that's always a thrill. It always gives me a little tingle. It did when Sandy Duncan did it in her version of Peter Pan. It did the several times I saw Cathy Rigby do it in hers, and in one I saw with an unknown actress. For a few seconds there, the wires didn't matter because it was Peter Pan and not only could he actually fly but he was connecting with us, showering us with his magic the way he'd showered Wendy, Michael and John.
I didn't feel that way last night as Ashley Brown was hovering near us. I thought, "Oh, look. There's a pretty lady on two very visible wires." Try as I might, I couldn't make the wires go away, even for twenty seconds.
I do not feel good about not liking the show…and I emphasize that an awful lot of the audience was standing and cheering at the end. I don't know what they all got out of it but I applauded for the effort and the energy. I wish I could have applauded for something more than that.