Melbourne will continue its run of Broadway musicals with the announcement of `Mary Poppins` coming to town in July 2010.
‘Mary Poppins’ the musical has been one of the major attractions of both New York’s Broadway and London’s West End for nearly 5 years.Theatrical producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh and head of Disney Theatrical Thomas Schumacher announced the event via a satellite hook-up at Parliament House in Melbourne on Monday, hosted by Victorian State Premier John Brumby.
Sir Cameron tells Undercover News that we can look forward to a new music experience with ‘Mary Poppins’ after he successfully merged the old music with new songs written for the stage production. “I would say that over half the score is new music,” he told Undercover. “There are four or five completely new songs and the great old songs like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” have complete new sections which have been meshed seamlessly into the old score. Only about three or four songs are being performed as exactly the Sherman Brothers wrote for the original score”.
Thomas Schumacher said the new music began even before he was recruited for the show. “When George Stiles and Anthony Drewe began writing long before I was brought in by Cameron, the first song that they picked was a song called ‘Practically Perfect’. It is a song where Mary is measuring the children which comes from the book. She asks how they measure and she says “practically perfect in every way”.
“The irony is that this is a song that George and Anthony wrote but the Sherman Brothers had also written a song called ‘Practically Perfect’ to go in exactly the same spot in the movie, neither knowing that this had been written ahead of time. That is why Cameron references the song as completely brand new. There is a wonderful moment where the song is spelt out loud,” he said.
“It is a huge dance number, a major start point and that is one of the big things we have done with this musical,” said Sir Cameron.
Sir Cameron obtained the stage rights for the show directly from the author of Mary Poppins, Australian writer P.L. Travers. “When George and Anthony heard that I got the rights back in the early 90s they desperately wanted to write the additional songs and they did ‘Practically Perfect’ on spec. It is the one song in the show that hasn’t changed from the original demo to what we play ever night.
Mary Poppins the musical will start at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne in July 2010.
