Mary Poppins is a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious musical playing until the end of November at the Bristol Hippodrome.
The show which is made out of sugar and spice and all things nice and is one of the best family productions I have ever seen.
Flying in on the east wind and hanging from her trademark black umbrella with parrot handle Mary Poppins arrives at number 17 Cherry Tree Lane to bring order to the dysfunctional Banks family.
With a stay-at-home mother and a working-all-hours father the children have made short shrift of a succession of nannies.
This is Victorian England where children are seen and not heard.
Former nannies were fond of dosing the Banks children dollops of a noxious green ‘treacle and brimstone’ tonic so it is no wonder they aren’t very amiable in the beginning.
But Mary Poppins dispenses fairness and fun in equal measures with a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
This imaginative and energetic show is full of magical moments with none of the nasty undertones of some gruesome fairytales of the Grimm Brothers ilk.
It was a marvellous mixture of Hansel and Gretel (Mr Bank’s old nanny has a Germanic accent); Oliver! (London street scenes); Nanny McPhee (comings and goings); Peter Pan (nursery and flying); and Doctor Doolittle (talking to animals) with no warts and not a naughty step in sight.
West End star Zizi Strallen is Mary Poppins and with pretty doll-like pink cheeks and cut glass diction to match her nonsense approach she is more than ‘practically perfect’.
Zizi comes from a famous theatrical family and her aunt is Bonnie Langford who appeared at the Bristol Hippodrome in Working 9 to 5 back in March 2013.
Australian song and dance man Matt Lee is marvellous as chimney sweep Bert and hold your breath when he ‘walks’ all round the front of stage – floor, sides, top.
The man with dreams is gullible dad George Banks who is played by Shakespearian actor Milo Twomey – you just want to give him a hug and let him fly a kite.
Versatile performer Rebecca Lock who reminded me of a young Joan Plowright is the mother Winifred Banks whose past as a former actress counts against her in this class-riddled society.
Michael and Jane Banks were played by Ruby McGivern, aged 12, and Colby Mulgrew, 10.
Colby who has some of the best one-liners and facial expressions actually gets to swear on stage!
Both the children were wonderful – real super troupers who maintained the frenzied pace.
Film and soap star Penelope Woodman plays the tyrannical Miss Andrew who as nanny to young Mr Banks she almost succeeded in stunting his emotional development.
Best described as ‘she looks like something that would eat its young’ she is suitably formidable.
Stage actress Wendy Ferguson plays Mrs Brill the bossy cook whose doppelgänger appeared in Upstairs Downstairs.
She can’t bake a cake and her comeuppance is when the kitchen gets trashed.
I loved the titling and haunting voice of Grainne Renihan as Bird Woman singing Tuppence and the comedic walk-on parts of Miss Lark (Sophie Caton) and Admiral Bloom (Graham Hoadly).
It is full marks to all the cast for a flawless performance and the fabulous costumes, set, routines and special effects.
It’s all a jolly holiday going from black and white silhouettes to a kaleidoscope of colours and when atmospheric freeze frame moments bust into movement its a snapshot of joy.
The troupe perform ballet, ballroom and acrobatic routines reminisce of the Tiller girls at the London Palladium and the Irish foot-tapping steps from Riverdance.
There are Pearly kings and queens, a circus in the park, living statues wearing nought but a fig leaf and the set looks like a folding dolls house and the illusions it creates are pop-up magic.
The grey Kafka sloping wall in the bank, old men with whiskers wearing tall top hats and tails create a slightly oppressive ‘precision and order’.
And the can-do line of the evening was ‘you can move a mountain with a big enough spade’.
So how did this stage show compare with the 1960s film starring the prim and proper Julie Andrews in the title role and American comedian Dick Van Dyke as the friendly chimney sweep?
Well no animated wizardry or grating Cockney accents so I liked it much better.
Author PL Travers penned the Mary Poppins series of eight children’s books.
With music and lyrics by award-winning brothers Robert and Richard Sherman with additional music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe and a script by Downton Abbey wordsmith Julian Fellowes what’s not to like?
The stage show swaps the suffragette scene in the film for park statues coming alive which is the book.
Disney theatrical president and producer Thomas Schumacher and the commercially successful British theatrical producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh were in Bristol for the staging of the co-production and it was rumoured that contemporary choreographer and director Matthew Bourne who added all the high octane dance sequences came to see his muse Zizi Strallen in the lead role.
In an auditorium which was full of national and local media people I also spotted lovely comedian Eddie Large and his wife Patsy.
The cast had to take multiply curtain calls at the end of the show when everyone stood to clap and cheer and the auditorium was buzzing with excitement as we filed out.
Carol Deacon