Enchanting Mary Poppins show is practically perfect in every way
Musicals Mary Poppins
Prince Edward Theatre ★★★★★
‘Oh Mary Poppins, it’s been so awful since you left,” wails Jane Banks after the return – tugged serenely earthward on the end of a kite – of the world’s most famous nanny, midway through this copperbottomed pleasure of a musical.
The oldest Banks child is referring to the dreadful imposition of the gorgon governess of her father’s (damaged) youth, Miss Andrew. But she could speak for all of us, looking back on the testing interval since the belated theatrical incarnation of PL Travers’s stories (cannily using classic songs from the 1964 Disney film, but not solely beholden to them) was last seen in the West End.
Since its closure in 2008, after a three-year premiere run at the Prince Edward, we’ve had financial woe, political turmoil and mounting alarm at climate change, the origins of which are inadvertently signalled in the belching chimneys of Bob Crowley’s set – which affords multiple switches between grimy Victorian London and fantastical realms of colour.
So never mind the needs of the children this Christmas; it is careworn adults who stand to benefit most from the “jolly holiday with Mary”, a medicinal sugar-rush dispensed not so much by the spoonful as by the crateful. It’s curious how many hit British musicals involve our need to revert to childhood, fighting for an innocence and joy that gets crushed under the grindstone of grown-up life.
The Bankses are – to use parlance unfamiliar when Travers first introduced the world to 17 Cherry Tree Lane in 1934 – “stressed”. The financier patriarch George (lent a lovely John Cleesey uptightness by Joseph Millson) is fretfully preoccupied with work. He barely registers his nippers (impeccably played on the night I attended by Charlotte Breen and Samuel Newby) and actively (painfully-comically) recoils from his spouse Winifred (a quietly wounded Amy Griffiths) when she leans over his desk to give him a peck on the cheek.
The simple but very relatable emotional journey of the drama involves him registering the value of the bundles of joy under his nose – who teach him the way to let go, and live; but equally, his unsung devotion becomes better appreciated all round. The catalyst, of course – with a soupçon of romantic rivalry for Winifred – is Poppins, who literally pops up here, mid domestic argy-bargy, with her parrot-headed umbrella held aloft, radiating serenity.
Zizi Strallen (who played the role on tour in 2015) might have stepped from a picture-book. She is, to cite one of the better songs of the blandish cache by Stiles and Drewe (augmenting the bankable Sherman Brothers classics), “practically perfect in every way”. Her self-possession and surreptitious air of mischief fits like a glove – you happily credit that she can draw impossibly large objects from her carpet-bag, snap her fingers to reconstitute a smashed-up kitchen, calmly glide up banisters – oh yes, and sail unperturbed right over the stalls.
Her composure is beautifully counterpointed by Charlie Stemp as Bert, who just as coolly – but more merrily, – saunters right up and round the proscenium arch during Step in Time. That plus Supercalifragilistic …
– a riot of tongue-twisting and bodybending – are alone worth the price of admission (co-choreography by Stephen Mear and Matthew Bourne, direction by Richard Eyre).
Then there’s Petula Clark, first lady of Britpop, as the ragged Bird Woman, crooning Feed the Birds. Beaming beatifically, she doesn’t raise the roof but stirs the heart, which young or old, should find in this enchanted evening just the right mix of psychological succour and showbiz chutzpah.
Booking until May 2020. Tickets: 0844 482 5151; marypoppinsonstage.co.uk