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'Poppins' never takes off

By Matt Windman

5:54 PM EST, November 16, 2006

Gavin Lee (center, jumping) as ÂBertÂ and the original Broadway company of MARY POPPINS at the New Amsterdam Theatre. (Joan Marcus)

What's the opposite of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Let's try saderkindadisappointmentidioticocious.

The long-awaited Broadway musical of Disney's "Mary Poppins," to much surprise, is hardly Disney's "Mary Poppins." Here, the Banks' home runs amuck with child abuse. Little Jane and Michael are not adorable, but plain nasty. Treasured songs like "I Love to Laugh" and "Stay Awake" are replaced with bland ballads and a gothic opera sequence in which the children's toys come to life and sentence them to death. Cute, huh?

As the result of a business compromise between Disney, which owns the film rights, and English mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh, who owns the literary rights, "Mary Poppins" plays out like an overwritten, unhealthy combination of Disney giddiness, bulky set design and late nineteenth-century European naturalism. Even kids will need more than one spoonful of sugar to make this mediocrity go down.

As stage musical flops like "Singin' in the Rain" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" suggest, it is almost impossible to adapt a live film musical for the theater. Though we may appreciate the efforts of performers like Ashley Brown or Gavin Lee, they instantaneously appear bland compared to our memories of Julie Andrews or Dick Van Dyke. And though many of the film's songs did not support the plot, we'd surely rather hear those Sherman Brothers ditties than some insipid anthems that sound more appropriate for a Lloyd Webber show.

At the least, "Mary Poppins" is superior to Disney train wrecks like "Aida" and "Tarzan." Matthew Bourne's choreography makes beautiful moments out of "Supercal" and "Step in Time," and it is surely exciting to see Ms. Poppins fly to the rafters in the finale. Still, this is also a far cry from the dazzling splendor that shook up "The Lion King," thanks to Julie Taymor's avant-garde direction.

Perhaps what "Mary Poppins" needs most of all is personality. More problematic than just the monotonic perkiness of Ashley Brown's performance, "Mary Poppins" appears to have been directed in a dozen different styles, leading to an identity crisis in which it does not know what kind of musical it wants to be. Till some degree of coherence is achieved, not even a magic umbrella could make "Mary Poppins" fly.

New Amsterdam Theatre, 214 West 42nd St, 212-307-4747, $20-110. Tues 8pm, Wed 2 & 8pm, Thurs-Fri 8pm, Sat 2 & 8pm, Sun 3pm.