Director/choreographer Russell Garrett’s charming MARY
POPPINS (@ Wheelock Family Theatre through Feb. 28th) has all the
elements of the beloved film plus the most inventive choreography I’ve seen
this season. Garrett’s deliciously original, wildly gestural dance vocabulary
for the Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious showstopper is one of the
reasons to see Wheelock’s production of the musical.
The other reasons are the strong, crisp performances: Lisa
Yuen is a fierce, take charge Mary; Andrew Giordano as father has a joyous
reclamation reminiscent of Dickens’ most famous epiphany; Shana Dirik tears up
the stage as the “holy terror” of nannies; Dan Reardon as the chimney sweep
leads the company in a roof raising tap extravaganza in Act II. But this MARY
POPPINS has something more to offer than the fanciful tale of an enchanted
nanny.
Gamalia Pharms (as the bird woman) is at the very heart of
the story: What do we want for our children, if not to learn compassion, for
their fellow human beings… and for all sentient creatures. It’s no accident
that birds figure so importantly in the narrative. Mary teaches the children to
look beyond themselves.
Mary frees the nasty nanny’s caged lark from its prison and
when she sees a woman selling crumbs for the birds, she encourages the children
to “look beyond what [they] see” and join her in an act of selflessness. Pharms
delivers a beatific performance and her lovely, simple Feed the Birds
has double resonance when father realizes he has been sleep walking through
life. When he encounters and engages Pharms with her birds, we know he has
reclaimed his humanity.
The Wheelock production has it all: gentle performances like
Laura D. DeGiacomo as mother, sparkling turns from Cameron Levesque and Eowyn
Young as the children and a company who make the dancing pop.
