#1
Posted: 11/16/06 at 6:49pm
Talkin Broadway is Mostly Negative:
"Disney and Mackintosh are both experts at shepherding shows to worldwide success with generous infusions of capital, and ensuring your $110 ticket gets you a superb-looking show. So when they teamed to bring to the stage both P.J. Travers's stories about an enchanted English nanny and the 1964 Disney musical film that made her a household name, results at once eye-popping and headache-inducing were perhaps inevitable.
But the other shows each has been involved with - Mackintosh's record-smashing pop operas, including Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Cats; Disney's Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aida, and Tarzan - haven't told stories about the dangers of pursuing wealth to the exclusion of all else. So even when those shows lack soul - as they all too frequently do - they're never hypocritical. Mary Poppins is seldom anything but.
It looks like designer Bob Crowley was encouraged to spend a small fortune on sets and costumes of uncommon bounty, which evoke Victorian London in sepia shades, Technicolor, and opulent extravagance. But for Mackintosh and Disney, these are investments in a show all but guaranteed to run somewhere in the realm of forever, and it's in every other element of the show, from the book and score to the performers, that Mary Poppins is indistinguishable from a no-fee, no-frills ATM for its creators.
For while Mackintosh reportedly wanted to divest Travers's property of the film's saccharine, he wasn't willing to do it at the expense of the score and characterizations that made the movie an international and intergenerational phenomenon. Thus, this Mary Poppins attempts to combine the relative grit of Travers's stories and the blood-level familiarity of classic Sherman brothers songs like "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee," "A Spoonful of Sugar," and "Let's Go Fly a Kite" into a new creation that's the best of both worlds.
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These choices, and others, rob the material of its inherent musicality, which doesn't stop the songs from coming. And as long as audiences get those songs - plus a flying, spellcasting Mary, a wise-cracking chimney sweep in her compatriot Bert, and the requisite uplifting ending - they'll be thrilled whatever other flaws abound. The Shermans' songs remain bouncy and playful, though a couple have been (regrettably, but not devastatingly) excised. George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have written a bunch of new numbers to round out the score; while they're in no way the equals of the Shermans' classics, they're the best Disney stage songs since The Lion King.
They don't stick in the memory, though; little about this Mary Poppins does that wasn't implanted years (or decades) ago. Some of Matthew Bourne's choreography, especially for the bloated second-act production number "Step in Time," is cute (though the frantic "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," diluted to a series of reductive hand gestures, disappoints), and it will take a while for Crowley's sets and costumes to be equaled in quality and quantity at today's reduced budgets.
Everything else tends to vanish from your mind almost instantly, including the performers, most of whom seem to have been cast precisely so they can easily be replaced. Eyre even seems to have directed them to display as little personality as possible, so the next 20 years of sit-down and touring productions will all have performers displaying roughly the same, animatronic traits."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/MaryPop.html
"Disney and Mackintosh are both experts at shepherding shows to worldwide success with generous infusions of capital, and ensuring your $110 ticket gets you a superb-looking show. So when they teamed to bring to the stage both P.J. Travers's stories about an enchanted English nanny and the 1964 Disney musical film that made her a household name, results at once eye-popping and headache-inducing were perhaps inevitable.
But the other shows each has been involved with - Mackintosh's record-smashing pop operas, including Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Cats; Disney's Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aida, and Tarzan - haven't told stories about the dangers of pursuing wealth to the exclusion of all else. So even when those shows lack soul - as they all too frequently do - they're never hypocritical. Mary Poppins is seldom anything but.
It looks like designer Bob Crowley was encouraged to spend a small fortune on sets and costumes of uncommon bounty, which evoke Victorian London in sepia shades, Technicolor, and opulent extravagance. But for Mackintosh and Disney, these are investments in a show all but guaranteed to run somewhere in the realm of forever, and it's in every other element of the show, from the book and score to the performers, that Mary Poppins is indistinguishable from a no-fee, no-frills ATM for its creators.
For while Mackintosh reportedly wanted to divest Travers's property of the film's saccharine, he wasn't willing to do it at the expense of the score and characterizations that made the movie an international and intergenerational phenomenon. Thus, this Mary Poppins attempts to combine the relative grit of Travers's stories and the blood-level familiarity of classic Sherman brothers songs like "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee," "A Spoonful of Sugar," and "Let's Go Fly a Kite" into a new creation that's the best of both worlds.
_______________________________________________________________
These choices, and others, rob the material of its inherent musicality, which doesn't stop the songs from coming. And as long as audiences get those songs - plus a flying, spellcasting Mary, a wise-cracking chimney sweep in her compatriot Bert, and the requisite uplifting ending - they'll be thrilled whatever other flaws abound. The Shermans' songs remain bouncy and playful, though a couple have been (regrettably, but not devastatingly) excised. George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have written a bunch of new numbers to round out the score; while they're in no way the equals of the Shermans' classics, they're the best Disney stage songs since The Lion King.
They don't stick in the memory, though; little about this Mary Poppins does that wasn't implanted years (or decades) ago. Some of Matthew Bourne's choreography, especially for the bloated second-act production number "Step in Time," is cute (though the frantic "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," diluted to a series of reductive hand gestures, disappoints), and it will take a while for Crowley's sets and costumes to be equaled in quality and quantity at today's reduced budgets.
Everything else tends to vanish from your mind almost instantly, including the performers, most of whom seem to have been cast precisely so they can easily be replaced. Eyre even seems to have directed them to display as little personality as possible, so the next 20 years of sit-down and touring productions will all have performers displaying roughly the same, animatronic traits."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/MaryPop.html
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 11/16/06 at 06:49 PM
What's up with that kid? I've worked with kids younger than him that can formulate complete, intelligent sentences. Word of Mouth really has to go. 
