Mary Poppins

At Amy's suggestion, we went to see Mary Poppins at the Palace Cadillac last night. My feelings about the show were complicated. I admit a strong prejudice against this horrible trend of taking successful motion pictures and turning them into Broadway shows in order to ensure the return on investment. However in this case, they did change the story a fair amount and added in more of a storyline.

The care they took with the sets and costumes was amazing, as was the chorus. The main characters, particularly Bert and the kids were played extremely well, as was the father, who was always my favorite character from the movie and became mine in the play after a rough start.

The first act was too long. No way around it. It needed to be compressed. Overly long scenes in which very little actually happened, despite the lovely moving statuary in the park and other effects, it was too long of a set up.

The second act, which was shorter, darker and lively, saved the show for me. 1) Things began to happen dramatically: the arrival of the evil nanny, children running away, jobs possibly lost. 2)The chimney sweep scene on the rooftops really was a showstopper with Bill doing a dazzling up to the ceiling of the theater.

For me the best part was that it became clearer that the writers had taken pains to heighten the stakes a bit. In the movie, the father is a good man who's lost site of what really matters and is at risk of permanently alienating his children. Here we (and his family) learn that he was in fact raised by a ghoul of a woman who caused him psychological harm (and scared the crap out of me for a moment during her introduction).

Also, unless I'm just reading too much into family entertainment, the writers seem to be suggesting a bit more about Mary Poppins. There are allusions to the gods of Greek Mythology, voodoo, immortality, angels, the stars. She and Bert share an affection to each other, but it's understood that they really can't be together.

I guess I like the show better today than during the actual viewing.