Mary Poppins tour review – no wonder that it’s Mary that we love

The headlines write themselves. Twenty years after Cameron Mackintosh launched Mary Poppins in Bristol, it has returned, still “practically perfect”, a “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” humdinger of a show that proves if there was any doubt that PL Travers’s creation is timeless. It’s well known that Mary’s creator was sceptical of the film, you can imagine that was also true of a stage musical, but under the careful eyes of some of the titans of British theatre, the work was always in safe hands. As the show comes of age, it’s still as well-realised as ever, its magic pouring through every well-choreographed frame. It takes a classic film and, for this critic, improves upon it.

Not that this adaptation is focused solely on replicating the movie. Going back to the original series of novels, in which Travers charted her nannies’ adventures over five separate works, the stage show both deepens and explains the characters in a way the film does not. George Banks may still ignore his family for the sake of his job in the bank, but his lack of understanding with his children comes from a childhood lost to the tyrannical nanny he grew up with. Winifred Banks may not be a placard-hoisting suffragette here, but a lost housewife still pining for a previous life on the stage (a world that Travers began on). It grounds the fantastical: Mary Poppins may bring a spoonful of sugar to the Banks household, but there are real life traumas to tackle. Just as in the film, we love and care about them deeply.

A satisfying arc is one thing, but ultimately when it comes to Disney it is spectacle you are there for. From the technicolour jamboree of “Jolly Holiday” to the show-stopping “Step In Time”, a seven-minute tap tour-de-force that builds up to a mammoth crescendo, director Richard Eyre and co-choreographers Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear find magic, supported by designer Bob Crowley’s recreation of London skylines, grey banks and rickety households. There may never have been a more accoladed creative team assembled for a work before or since and the love, skill, and time put in can be discovered in every moment, nothing feels anything but fully considered. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a huge pressure to match what is for most people a huge part of their childhood. That they have been able to surpass it is astonishing, arguably this will stand as the finest work any of them have produced.

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Mackintosh has ensured the brakes haven’t come off after all these years, assembling the kind of tour cast that only his nous can. Flown in from Australia, where they both picked up countless awards and accolades Stefanie Jones and Jack Chambers are true triple threats as Mary and Bert, the kind of consummate professionals that thrill while making it look easy. Jones is prim, proper and extraordinary, whether dancing, commanding, or hitting top notes in her confrontation with her antithesis (Wendy Ferguson is hissable as the terrorising Miss Andrews), while Chambers, while occasionally landing an Australian syllable that feels fitting for a Dick van Dyk tribute, dances up a storm (he previously won the Australian version of So You Think You Can Dance).  It’s a pleasure to get these performances. More homegrown, Michael D. Xavier starts a new phase in his career as Mr Banks, with his formal moustache, lean frame, and stiff formality he resembles John Cleese’s Basil, especially in his slapstick fear of the nanny, and brings luxurious vocals to the role.  Meanwhile, Lucie-Mae Sumner brings a different slant to his put-upon wife, with her Northern vocals and flexible face, this Mrs Banks one imagines was more a knockabout comedian on the stage than a tragic tragedian. Her goofiness is endearing, the pain of trying to balance being a good mother with being a good wife etched all over her face.

The strong casting continues deep, Rosemary Ashe, a long-time Poppins veteran, is a hoot as Mrs Brill, consistently terrorising her underling Ruairidh McDonald’s Robertson Ay, while Patti Boulaye brings extra class as the Bird Woman, her megawatt smile may not suggest a lifetime of hardship, but she brings to life one of Richard and Robert Sherman’s greatest songs. With charming performances from Matilda O’Sullivan and Jude Martin-Thomas as the Banks children, this is still a Rolls-Royce of a production. Mary Poppins may have one of the most iconic exits in the history of theatre, but with this level of detail and care, it will be a long time before she leaves our stages.