What: Mary Poppins
Where: McPherson Playhouse
When: Until April 30
Tickets: $42.50-$52.50
Reservations: 250-386-6121
Rating: Four and a half stars (out of 5)
If you had any concerns that seeing the musical-theatre version of Mary Poppins might tarnish fond memories of the 1964 Disney movie or fail to do it justice, you can rest easy.
The Canadian College of Performing Arts production has a personality all its own, while exuberantly honouring the screen classic and the P.L. Travers books that inspired it. Like Mary Poppins herself, this magical and mesmerizing confection is “practically perfect,” to quote the title of one snappy new tune.
Director-choreographer Darold Roles and his creative collaborators onstage and off have outdone themselves with what has been billed as CCPA’s most ambitious production.
While the show got off to an underwhelming start, its pace soon picked up with Practically Perfect, the introductory song Mary Poppins sings with young charges Michael and Jane Banks.
It’s one of the better new tunes George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have concocted to enhance the timeless favourites. Together with a witty, although intermittently darker, script by Julian Fellowes, it makes for an artful fusion of elements from the film and books that adds a layer of psychological complexity.
The result is a family-friendly crowd pleaser.
Make no mistake, however. Along with the domestic darkness, the show’s magic and the glorious music brought to life by music director Heather Burns and her orchestra, there are enough spoonfuls of sugar to put fans at risk of theatrical diabetes.
You first get a sense of the magic that lies ahead when Julie Mombourquette, who appears to have been born to play the title character, flies over to No. 17 Cherry Lane, her signature brolly aloft, to heal what Michael calls his “upside-down family.”
Noteworthy examples of the magic that makes this show technically triumphant include the sight of Mary Poppins unpacking a potted plant, a large wall mirror and a hat stand from her bottomless carpetbag, a feat that elicited audible gasps, and magically restoring order to a wrecked kitchen during A Spoonful of Sugar.
The illusion of plates leaping back onto shelves, and birds flying through a London streetscape during Feed the Birds also exemplifies the ingenuity of Jason King’s projection design, which includes images of London Bridge, clouds drifting past the moon and bank interiors.
Roles moves the familiar story at a brisk pace, imbuing it with colour and razzmatazz.
Highlights include Jolly Holiday, in which a drab London park populated by white statues who later spring to life explodes into a riot of colour, song and dance, with dancers in penguin suits replacing the film’s animated creatures. Another big showstopper is Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious, an eye-popping spectacle that showcases the CCPA cast’s talents.
Spectacular in an altogether different way, with input from tap choreographer Janice Tooby-Macdonald, is Step in Time, the chimney-sweep dazzler that fuses tap dance with flashes of Riverdance, acrobatics and wire work, and brought the house down.
Just as Mombourquette fearlessly embodies the benevolently mischievous spirit of Mary Poppins with wit and an amazing singing voice, Chase Sander, who reaches his zenith as Bert during this rooftops spectacle, makes the chimney sweep his own. Like so many others whose accents are “spit-spot,” Sander’s Cockney is far superior to Dick Van Dyke’s notoriously bad attempt.
In a cast notable for exceptional singing voices, other standouts include Devin Arams, suitably uptight as George Banks, the absent father and banker; Kira Renee, whose beautiful rendition of Being Mrs. Banks is a highlight of her performance as a more downcast Winifred, now a former actor; and Melissa Kahan and Jesse Deutscher, who rise, remarkably, to the challenges of playing the Banks children.
Providing hilarous comic relief are Charlotte Thompson as Mrs. Brill, the self-pitying cook and housekeeper who complains "A slave in ancient rome was on a pleasure cruise compared to my life" and Vinny Keats as Robertson Ay, the clumsy footman.
In her defining number Brimstone and Treacle, Miranda Sheepwash is also briefly amusing as Miss Andrew, the brimstone-belching nanny from hell who traumatized George.
While the cast’s talent and professionalism brought Mary Poppins flawlessly to life on the weekend, its other technical contributions cannot be overlooked.
Chief among these are Shannon Carmichael’s sumptuous costumes, Jarod Crockett’s evocative sound design and Adam Wilkinson’s spectacular lighting.
While this Mary Poppins is distinguished by its new material, such as the fresh, optimistic spectacle Anything Can Happen, purists won’t be disappointed.
Theatregoers singing A Spoonful of Sugar while strolling down Pandora Avenue were living proof.
mreid@timescolonist
