“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Jolly Holiday,” and “Feed the Birds.” More than just delightful musical diversions, the songs became integrated into the narrative that was taking shape. Piecing together episodes from the books, the film’s creators conceived a dramatic through-line in which Mary Poppins has a mission to save the Banks family, particularly the emotionally distant Mr. Banks. When she sings “tuppence a bag,” he insisted, it has “nothing to do with tuppence or bread crumbs. It’s about the fact that it doesn’t take much to give love, that it costs very little to make a difference to other people’s lives.”
When Mary Poppins the motion picture finally opened in 1964, it was a huge success. Audiences fell in love with Julie Andrews as Mary, Dick Van Dyke as Bert, and the technical wizardry of the animation that brought magical moments to life. The movie was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards® and took home five statues, including Best Score. The singing nanny of Disney’s motion picture captivated theater producer Cameron Mackintosh. “The character of Mary Poppins was so extraordinary that I could never forget her, nor the wonderful Sherman Brothers’ songs,” he remarked. It wasn’t until Mackintosh made a personal visit to P.L. Travers in 1993 that his dream started to take shape. Mackintosh brought with him a proven track record for producing theatrical hits including Cats, Les Misérables, and Phantom of the Opera, as well as a deep understanding and love for the Mary Poppins books. Though Travers was skeptical at first, Mackintosh managed to convince her that in order for the stage musical to succeed, it would have to utilize some of the elements that audiences knew and loved from the movie. With Travers’s blessing to use material from her books, Mackintosh approached Disney. They found that they were on the same page about the direction of the project and were able to develop a working collaboration.
It was the plan of the creative team to go back to the original source material to enrich the story with details and deepen dramatic themes. Combining elements from both the books and the movie with brand new material, this Mary Poppins takes the spotlight as a re-envisioned character all her own. She sings, she dances and she flies over the audience. By teaching the children to open up their awareness to the joy and hardships of others, she is able to help them teach their parents a lesson about what is most important in life. She opens up a world of possibility where “anything can happen if you let it.”
The Banks children, responsible for chasing away countless nannies, got a chance to show their naughty side. Drawing inspiration from two chapters in the books, “Bad Tuesday” and “Bad Wednesday,” Jane and Michael misbehave by fighting with each other and talking back to their mother. They also take their aggression out on their toys, ripping an arm off a doll in one of their tussles. In the play, the episodes of acting out by the children underscore a deep need to be seen by their distracted parents and serve as the dramatic impetus for Mary Poppins to leave the house at the end of Act 1.
Returning to the books also yielded new characters not seen in the movie, including Mr. Banks’s former nanny, Miss Andrew. Known as the “Holy Terror,” Miss Andrew presents a view on nannying that is diametrically opposed to Mary Poppins’s methods. Subscribing to traditional ideas of parenting, she believes children should be seen and not heard. Not only does she provide a villain for the piece, as well as a foe for Mary, but she also creates a richness to Mr. Banks’s backstory. Terrorized by her harsh severity and “brimstone and treacle” medicine, Mr. Banks learned to adopt “precision and order” as his mantra in life and prioritize work above spending time with his family.
A Broadway production debuted in 2006 at the New Amsterdam Theatre. After over six years and 2619 performances, the show closed to make room for Aladdin, though not before becoming one of the longest-running shows on Broadway. Mary Poppins continued to fly to stages across the country on the Mary Poppins national tour. At the core of all the incredible stage spectacle is a simple story about the coming together of a family. It is this emotional center, along with Mary’s magic, that allows these characters to transcend generations – across books, film, and theatrical productions.
