The Stage

Mary Poppins

Published Friday 13 January 2006 at 13:55 by Mark Shenton

Mary Poppins is still flying high over the West End, a year after she first hovered into view at the Prince Edward Theatre and is now Broadway-bound to open at the New Amsterdam Theatre in October.

Seeing it again now, it is still a visual knockout, as Bob Crowley’s magnified doll’s house of a set reveals its surprises and co-choreographers Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear set the stage alight with the energy of their superbly inventive dance setpieces that climaxes in a chimney sweep tap ballet, culminating in an upside down walk across the proscenium for Bert that’s simply breathtaking.

But the joy of this stage version of the popular Disney film is that it both recreates those fond memories in the wonderful Sherman brothers songs but, thanks to the book by Julian Fellowes and the additional songs of Stiles and Drewe, deepens and darkens it, too. It is a show full of solid, old-fashioned storytelling virtues, which pulses above all to a human - or in Mary’s case superhuman - heart.

The anguished marriage at the centre of it is newly beautifully embodied by Aden Gillett’s Mr Banks - forever damaged, it seems, by his own faulty parenting - and Eliza Lumley’s vulnerable Mrs Banks. As the nanny who flies in to look after their children and restore happiness, Scarlett Strallen is a shimmering new star and writes her own review in a song in which she claims to be “practically perfect in every way”. But Gavin Lee, remaining from before as Bert, is still the show’s showstopper.