Sarangel
<font color=red><font color=navy>Rumor has it ...<
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2000
I found this in the SF Chronicle this morning:
"Mary Poppins," the 1964 Disney film abou a magical nanny that won Julie Andrews an Academy Award in the title role, is being reinvented for the theatre as the latest stage musical to draw inspiration from a well-known movie.
The production will mark the first collaboration between Cameron Mackintosh, the British theater impressario behind such global hits as "Cats," "Les Miserables," and "The Phantom of the Opera," and the theatre division of the Walt Disney Co., whose shows include "Beauty and the Beast," "The Lion King," and "Aida."
Richard Eyre, head of Britain's National Theatre, will direct. The musical, which has not been cast, will open Dec. 15, 2004, at the Prince Edward Theatre on the West End after a seven- or eight-week out-of-town tryout. Rehersals start in July, producers said Monday [10/20/03].
"The fusion actuall has creaded something which is fresh, : said Mackintosh, who met several times with Pamela Travers, Australian author of the various novels on which the movie version was based.
Drawing from the beloved film and extensively from Travers' books, "Mary Poppins" on stage will be "something familiar but which has its own life, which is what one always strives for with any adaptation of anything." Mackintosh said.
For the theatre porduction, the Oscar-winning score by American brothers Richard and Robert Sherman will feature a half dozen or more new songs by the younger English songwriting team of George Stiles (music) and Anthony Drewe (lyrics).
That means playgoers can expect "A Spoonful of Sugar" and the Oscar-winning best song "Chim Chim Cher-ee," as well as new numbers, several of which, "Brimstone and Treacle" and "Practically Perfect," are already generating a buzz.
"Hopefully, everyone will get their favorite moment," Stiles said.
At a recent London read-through of the musical for an invited audience that included Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Drewe played Dick van ****'s screen role, Bert; two-time Olivier Award-winner Joanna Riding sang Mary Poppins.
In probably the greatest departure from the film, British actress-singer Julia McKenzie played Miss Andrew, a character prominently featured in the books, but who isn't in the movie.
The book writer for the stage musical is Julian Fellowes, the one-time actor who won an Oscar last year for his "Gosford Park" screenplay.
In an interview, Fellowes said that in returning to Travers' three main Poppins books and other works, the aim "was to invigorate a show by going back to its source."
These days, more and more theatre musicals ("The Full Monty," The Witches of Eastwick," Footloose") derive inspiration from films, where once the crative flow of traffic went the other way.
Among London's current hits is a stage adaptation of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," which itself bagan life as a film with a Sherman brothers score.
Mackintosh said he thought the time for a stage "Poppins" was now. "The whole notion of having a nanny - which in the '70s and '80s seemed something from a by-gone era - now no longer is: Most people with a bit of money have nannies."
Still, with eight months to go until rehersals, and a 30-member cast still to be signed, Mackintosh ws sounding reluctant to make too many claims.
"The show materially is in pretty good shape - as much as one can be that hasn't gone into rehersal," he said.