Just about every way humanly possible but first off, bringing the magical effects of the Disney movie classic would take a leap of imagination I don’t have and the Producers simply sidestepped on a consistent basis. Mary Poppins, the story of an English Nanny with magic at her fingertips in Victorian England and the two neglected children she is brought in to mind. Mary and friends have tea parties on ceilings, jump into paintings, slide up banisters, and all in all have a very good romp with a mixture of animation and live action and a glorious score by the Sherman Brothers.
How that became the Broadway musical, an unhappy bore of a show whose idea of magic is to have Mary fly across the theater carrying an umbrella. When Peter Pan was a wee tyke of a show, that was magical, now? Not so much. Nothing in this overlong (the first act alone went on for approximately three years) botched attempt at capturing the power of the Poppins,. You could blame the lame journeyman performance by Ashley Brown, who has a wide smile and a strong voice but lacks anything close to Julie Andrews radiance. Yeah, you could blame Ashley but as “Phantom”, “Cats”, “Wicked” and, lest we forget, Disney’s first foray onto Broadway “The Lion King” remind us, you not only can’t you also shouldn’t truly on star turns to make a huge profit on the Great White Way.
Sure, it is real tough to turn a buck in musical theater, but failing to do so with “Mary Poppins” was inexcusable. It was a deplorably unenchanted show, with the songs and the stories it fell apart in an overlong drag of tedium which stopped repeat visitors dead to right. And now it is paying the price. Good riddance.