How Director Eyre Helped Bring Poppins to Life

By Sheryl Flatow
25 May 2009

Richard Eyre
Richard Eyre
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Mary Poppins director Richard Eyre asked hard questions when shaping the classic Disney movie into a London, Broadway and touring stage show.

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Adapting a beloved movie musical for the stage is risky business. Broadway is littered with the good intentions of talented people who were unable to find the theatrical equivalent of cinematic magic.

Mary Poppins is one of those rare exceptions. When the show opened on Broadway in 2006, Michael Kuchwara, critic for the Associated Press, wrote, "It's a lavish stage version that's a wonder to behold, yet at its heart, Mary Poppins is a family drama. That this human and humane story shines through the dazzling special effects demonstrates the potency of its emotional impact."

From the outset, the stellar creative team headed by producers Cameron Mackintosh and Disney Theatricals' Thomas Schumacher was intent on honoring the film's legacy while creating a new and unique experience. "We all understood that, in essence, we were going to tell a very simple story," says director Richard Eyre. "It's a story about an unhappy family — two unhappy parents and two children who behave badly because they're unhappy — and the way in which that family becomes healed by the intervention of this wonderful creature, Mary Poppins. So we started from the inside, from telling the story of the family, and worked inside out, rather than trying to replicate the movie."

The show, which premiered in London in 2004, retains the familiar songs by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. The score has been seamlessly augmented by new numbers by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. The book is by Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park"), choreography is by Matthew Bourne (who co-directed) and Stephen Mear, and sets and costumes are by Bob Crowley.

 

Ashley Brown as Mary Poppins
photo by Joan Marcus

Eyre, who ran London's Royal National Theatre from 1988 to 1997, would not seem to be an obvious choice for directing Mary Poppins. He is principally acclaimed for his intelligent, exquisitely rendered explorations of the world's great dramatists, past and present, from Shakespeare and Ibsen to Hare and Stoppard. But Mackintosh pursued him, urging him to read the books by P.L. Travers that were the source material for the movie.

"I'd seen the movie, but it wasn't part of my heartland," says Eyre. "I admired the music, and it was the first time I'd seen the combination of live action and animation, which was brilliant. So I enjoyed it more as a cineast than anything else. But Cameron said, 'Read the books.' I did, and I found them really curious and intriguing. The idea of this nanny is such an original proposition — this figure who has semi-divine characteristics, who visits earth and mends people's lives. The other thing that struck me very strongly is that it is about unhappy families. If there's one thing I know about, it's unhappy families. An awful lot of my work is concerned with that. I'm interested in the ways that families operate. So I was very sympathetic to this world, and I guess that's why I got drawn in. The show is very much informed by the books. P.L. Travers was an interesting character. She took her Mary Poppins books very, very seriously. She didn't regard them as children's books. This is a woman that had a very unhappy childhood, and she escaped into this fictional world."

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