CityLife

Ale and Arty: Sugary Mary Poppins wins me over

SHOW-STOPPER: Mary Poppins

Stuart Brennan is an M.E.N. sports writer who for 30 years has believed that culture means beer and football. We have sent him out on a mission to sample the finer things in life. It’s too late for him to discover the new man, but he is taking a peek at the new Manchester.

This week his wife dragged him along to Mary Poppins at the Palace Theatre, running until March 7.

A SPOONFUL of sugar? Bloody shovel-loads of the stuff, there was, until the stalls at the Palace Theatre were awash in a gooey, giggling mess of saccharine slop-pots.

And that was just the audience.

It’s my own stupid fault. Just because it was the wife’s birthday, I let her choose where we would go for this week’s sally forth into the wide world of Manchester arts.

When she said she had heard good things about Mary Poppins, I tried manfully not to let my shoulders sag, and to keep that childish sulk off my face, without success.

So, to the Palace.

I hated Mary Poppins as a kid. Dick van Dyke’s hilarious Cockney accent was about the only thing to recommend the Disney film, with its snotty middle-class London kids, their wimpy mum and anally-retentive dad, who was a real banker – both professionally and in rhyming slang.

Into that pain-in-the-bum family, came Mary, played by Julie Andrews who, in 'The Sound of Music' had me supporting the Nazis for the only time in my film-going history.

I could feel the hate throbbing in my gut as we took our seats.

The hate swelled into an intestinal tumour of loathing as the chirpy Cockney chimney sweeps Gor-blimeyed onto stage, and the Banks family prissed and wittered their way around their Cherry Tree Lane house.

Was it just me? Thankfully no.

A glance around found a definite gender split. The blokes all has expressions which ranged from discomfort to horror as Mary, even more pompous and self-important than the Ms Andrews version, flew down from the Gods, dangling prissily from an umbrella, a superior grin fixed on her face.

Suckers

The women – they’re suckers for a couple of cute kids and a sickly plot line – were Aw bless’ing and singing along to their hearts content.

Perhaps it was a feminist thing, as Mary breezed into the Banks household and trampled all over the pompous Mr Banks and his ideas of order and discipline, in her funny, turny-uppy shoes.

Whatever it was, it was gonna take something Herculean from the cast to make me write something nice about this …

The early songs made it worse.

'Practically Perfect' sang Mary, of herself. Big-head.

Statues

'Jolly Holiday' sang Bert the sweep, backed by a load of statues who came to life in the local park. Yeah, right, “jolly” as in “jolly annoying”.

Then came 'A Spoonful of Sugar', which was made more palatable by some comic goings-on in the kitchen.

Gradually, things began to perk up.

You could suddenly see the dark side of this lighter-than-light affair.

Possessing

Mary was at it – sliding up bannisters, making lights flicker on and off, even possessing rival nanny Miss Andrew and forcing her to literally take a dose of her own medicine. It was Mary Poppins, Exorcist-style.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was an energetic effort, with the cast audaciously attempting to spell out the whole song in the fashion of the Village People’s YMCA song.

And when the nursery toys came to life, to put the bad-tempered kids on trial, the stage was haunted by shades of evil clowns and Chucky from the much-maligned horror flick Child’s Play.

Doll's house

The poor little girl in front of me almost melted into her dad’s shoulder as a doll’s over-sized hand shot out of the doll’s house to begin the eerie sequence.

'Step in Time' was the part I remembered most favourably from the film, with a load of chimney sweeps dancing their way around the rooftops – but the stage version blew it away.

Culminating in a stunning walk around the floors and ceiling by Bert, it was a breathless, toe-tapping joy.

By three-quarters of the way through, I had to check myself from swaying along, for fear the other men round about might see and report me to the Grufty Blokes Association.

By the end, bittersweet as Mary put the world to rights and then drifted away over the audience, even this flinty old heart had a twinge of regret.

Blasted with colour, brimming with life, vomit-worthy sweet at times, slightly eerie at times, and some great staging and special effects.

I hate to say it, but I quite liked it – and the wife loved it, happily clapping along. Then she gave me a slap for being a miserable old git.

Fair enough.