PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Mary Poppins Airborne and Eyre-Bourne
By Harry Haun
20 Nov 2006
At one point and for several years there were dueling 'Mary Poppins'-es afoot. Disney
was plotting the stage treatment of its original film musical of 1964, and Cameron Mackintosh purchased the stage musical rights to the series of Travers' books. After
some time of circling, the two parties came harmoniously together in December of 2001.
Thomas Schumacher, who produced this eye-popping Poppins for Disney
Theatrical Productions, ducked the question of budget. "It's reasonable to ask that, but the
lucky thing is that there are only two investors, Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, so we
don't have to talk about it. It's a good question, though. I would have asked it.
"You see it up there on the stage," Schumacher said, "and, in fairness, you're seeing the
second production. We did the development of it and the out-of-town tryouts for the
London production. It's the same size show. It's mechanically different in London, and
some of the effects are different, but fundamentally it is the London production."
Director Richard Eyre (pronounced "air" and, thus, well-named for this assignment) and
Swan Lake choreographer Matthew Bourne are not names previously associated together
in the same universe let alone the universe of musical comedy but it was Mackintosh's
brainstorm to bring them together to get Travers' nanny off the runway and into the air.
"Cameron said to both of us, 'I'm not doing this without the other one,' and he said to me, 'That's what it needs. It needs the two of you,'" relayed Bourne. "I had admired Richard's work for years, but we had never really met until we did this, so we gave it some thought. And it turned out to be a match made in heaven. We all got on so well.
"What I love about this show is that it doesn't rely on special effects and fantasy and big
numbers and spectacle it has them all, but it doesn't rely on them. For me, it's the heart of the show. If it didn't have all that, it would be less than it is. It's the combination of
this heartfelt story about this family and all the other things you expect in a big musical."
A self-confessed fan of the film from childhood, Bourne readily admitted, "The Sherman
Brothers are such heroes of mine my whole life. I saw the film when it first came out
when I was four or five. I've just never not known about it. It's been there all my life."
He sees no division between Broadway and ballet. "I deal with classic material people love. The way to approach it is with love for the material the book and the film to think 'This is a piece of theatre. It's a new musical. It's not the film on stage. It's something else.' I think because it came through this love of the material it ended up being true to the material but very, very different a piece of theatre rather than just a re-creation."
Eyre is hardly Mr. Music Man, although he hastily reminds you he directed Guys and
Dolls at the National and wrote a stage version of "High Society." The attack, he contended, doesn't change: "Not really. People say, 'Discriminate between musicals and straight
theatre.' I've always thought you should apply the same criteria to both i.e., you should
try and be truthful. Of course, musicals are a heightened form of experience, but, at the
same time, you have to represent the emotions truthfully. So I approach it the same."
He does manage to juggle parallel universes human-size dramas, punctuated with Broadway razzle-dazzle. "That's what I love. You go between very, very detailed, quite
intimate scenes about family life, and then you explode into fantasy and it's not arbitrary. It's to do with the meaning of the show. They're going from fantasy into reality to fantasy, and, as they go, they're receiving an education in how to look at the world."
It was smooth Eyre-Bourne teamwork. "We worked together very, very closely. There
was no division between his protected area and my protected area. We covered the whole
thing together, and he worked with Stephen Mear [credited as co-choreographer] too, so
we had two choreographers, and it was just a great collaboration between artists."
Another Mackintosh touch was bringing in a new pair of songwriters composer George
Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe to augment the original score by Richard M. and
Robert B. Sherman. Stiles remembered how heavy of foot he was in going to meet the
brothers. "To have a bar set that high those songs are in everybody's musical DNA it
was an impossible challenge to meet, but luckily they are the sweetest people in the
world," he said, "and that helps when you meet them so you don't feel so overwrought."
They entered the picture because Mackintosh did not want to just put the film on stage. Everybody involved wanted it to be a way to bring some of what was in the books with the best of the film with "let's make this thing really work on stage on its own terms."
The good news is that their pitch song "Practically Perfect," written on spec and as
Shermanesque as possible won them the assignment, and it was practically perfect,
changing only two lines since submission. The bad news is that that was 14 years ago.
Recalled Drewe: "They took us on board and said, 'You're going to be the musical dramatists for the show. You're going to have carte blanche use of any of the Sherman
Brothers' songs from the film, any of the Sherman Brothers' catalog that was written for the film but maybe didn't make it to the film and, if necessary, to write some new songs.
"We've written about seven new songs, and we've pulled apart and put back together some of the old ones. I know we've written about 55-60 percent of it. It was a much bigger job than we actually thought it was going to be, partly because we didn't think we were going
to be rewriting much of their stuff. We just thought we were going to be putting a few
new songs in, tailoring the musical story toward what Julian Fellowes was telling. But the
more the process continued, the more it became necessary to change the other stuff."
Bob Crowley has thrown some dazzling Broadway backdrops up for Disney from Aida to Tarzan, without blinking an eye so he makes himself right at home in Edwardian England, doubling as scenic and costume designer. "Following the film," he said, "was the hardest thing to do. It's such a beautiful icon of childhood that my responsibility to the film was utmost, really. Within that, trying to get the Banks house worked out was very complicated. The mechanics of the house was the singularly most difficult thing."
Mary Poppins is the second new-to-New York Sherman Brothers musical of the week. Busker Alley, which was stopped in its tracks on its way here in 1995 by Tommy Tune's broken foot, got a belated one-night-only unveiling Nov. 13 to benefit the York Theatre
Company, starring Jim Dale and directed by the man who originally designed the show,
Tony Walton. "Luckily, there were a few Broadway backers there who liked it so you never know," Dale said in the lobby. "It's a wonderful score, better than most. I've been dying to do this ever since I heard the title. I was born to play this part. It's a great role."
Mary Poppins' opening night audience included Angela Lansbury, Roger Rees (who delivers the very civil cellphone warning before the show), Rex Reed, Joe Mantello, Donny Osmond, Harvey Fierstein, Max Von Essen, Joel Grey, Sam Cohen, Jack Noseworthy, Kelli O'Hara (bound for L.A. to do Sunday in the Park With George for Jason Alexander, the director), Cynthia McFadden, John Lasseter, Marin Mazzie, David Zippel, Rick Elice, Jacob Young, Heather Headley, Stephen Schwartz and director-son Scott, Sh-K-Boom Records chief Kurt Deutsch (who just released the uptown edition of The Fantasticks, and is recording Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me Nov. 20 and will next wax The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin), Adam Pascal, Sara Gettelfinger, Calvin Klein, choreographer Sergio Trujillo, Marian Seldes, Donald Corren (who's accompanying Judy Kaye's Tony-nominated Florence Foster Jenkins on tour in Souvenir next stop, and Flo would have loved it: Tucson's Temple of Music and Art Jan. 13-Feb. 3, 2007), Sherie Rene Scott, Wayne Cilento, Dee Hoty, Natalie Morales, Audra McDonald, songwriter Andrew Lippa (who's making a Disney stage musical out of the Jules Feiffer novel, "The Man in the Ceiling"), Richard Kind, Josh Strickland, Disney president and CEO Robert A. Iger and Rosie O'Donnell.
Rosie's Broadway Kids, along with Grand Street Settlement and Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, received the $200,000 Disney would ordinarily spend on an opening night party.
The first-night vets left the New Amsterdam exhilarated and disoriented, with nowhere to
go but home. Quelle bizarre! A spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down, perhaps.
 |
 |
The cast of Mary Poppins at its opening night curtain call.
|
| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Click Here to Buy Tickets to This Show
