MARY POPPINS

I attended this magical opening night several weeks ago. The reason it’s taken me so long to post this review is thus: I usually can’t help but start writing the review of each play or event while I’m living it. Often it’s just in my head or sometimes I put pen to paper in the dark theatre. On opening night of Mary Poppins at the Ahmanson Theatre, though, I was so enthralled by it all that I couldn’t even notice my own thoughts!!! (Especially when Dick Van Dyke, the original Bert, the chimney sweep from the movie, came onstage at the end, to thunderous applause.)

So, it’s taken me a while to get cracking on writing this review. I really just didn’t want to start analyzing the wonderful experience yet.

Mary Poppins cast doing the musical number that I spelled in the last paragraph. (And hope never to have to do again. Whew!) Photo by Joan Marcus.

Even though one room in my house is dubbed “The Crayon Room,” with all child-esque appointments, and people often think of me as Peter Pan himself, I’ve never read a Mary Poppins book or even seen the old Disney film! You can marvel along with me at that hole in my childhood, one of the very few. (But don’t get me started on never seeing The Absent-Minded Professor!)

And, for very many years now, I’ve been friendly with the easiest-going man ever, Richard Sherman, who wrote the music for this and many other Disney classics, along with his brother, Robert. (I’m scared to tell you that they wrote It’s A Small World because you may hate me for the rest of the day when you can’t stop singing it!) So you think I would have rented the movie sometime after meeting him, just to see my pal’s work. But no. I just waited for them to make a Broadway show of it and then bring it to Los Angeles.

Sometimes, when you have high expectations of something, it lets you down. But Mary Poppins definitely did not. I really feel that I don’t have to tell you more than that I highly recommend it, to everyone. The performances are excellent, the music is fun, and the sets are colorful and fantastic. Seriously, what more do you need to know than that???

I say, just go see it, sit back and relax, and enjoy! I promise you will have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious time! (I just spelled that without ever seeing it written out! And when I checked the dictionary, [yes, it’s an officially-accepted English word] after I wrote it, I was correct!!! The magic must have rubbed-off on me!)