Mary Poppins, Edinburgh review: 'magnificent'

It’s difficult, at first glance, to imagine what a tale about a magical nanny in Edwardian London could possibly have to say to children and their families in Scotland today. Yet great children’s literature is all about how a mighty leap of imagination can bring the impossible within reach; and that’s what Richard Eyre’s great 2004 production of Mary Poppins achieves, as it rolls into the Festival Theatre on another triumphant UK tour.

The show - co produced by Cameron Mackintosh and Disney - follows both PL Travers’s 1933 book and the legendary 1964 Disney film in telling the story of the Banks family of Kensington, who are struggling to achieve the Edwardian idyll of family life because the children - Jane and Michael - are naughty, their nannies keep walking out, and their father is permanently uptight and absent in his City job as a banker.

Enter Mary Poppins, a nanny like no other, who blows in on the east wind, encourages the children’s wild imaginations rather than punishing them, takes them on incredible journeys through altered versions of everyday reality, and subtly challenges Mr Banks’s priorities, while supporting their mother Mrs Banks in her struggle to remain herself.

And while elements of this story are miles from the experience of most British families then and now, other aspects are painfully familiar; notably the sense of parents too harassed and busy to give their children the love and attention they crave, the critique of cruel upper-class child-rearing methods, and the extended sub-plot - in Julian Fellowes’s excellent script - about how Mr Banks almost loses his banking job for funding real-world enterprise and jobs, rather than some financier’s flashy ponsie scheme.

And if the show turns out to have plenty to say, it also delivers its story in magnificent style, weaving half a dozen relatively new songs by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe around the gorgeous original Sherman Brothers score, and filling the big Festival Theatre stage with a glorious combination of spectacle, magic, song and dance immaculately delivered by a tireless 25-strong cast; led by the quietly perfect Australian team of Stefanie Jones and Jack Chambers as Mary and her chimney-sweep admirer Bert, and - at the performance I saw, by a brilliant Oscar McCullough and Olaya Martinez Cambon as the children, Michael and Jane.

And if some of the new songs lack the magical lilt and lyricism of the much-loved originals, from a fantastically exuberant Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious to the pure minor-key magic of Chim Chim Cher-ee, they still work well enough to help create a gorgeous two and three quarter hours of theatre for all the family, lifted and inspired from start to finish by Isaac McCullough’s superb 12-strong live band, in the pit.

Mary Poppins is at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until 15 February