Remember our trip to London, when Cleo and I saw a performance of The Sound of Music and encountered a slight misunderstanding about the meaning of the phrase "her dead father" ?
On this trip we saw a performance of Mary Poppins on Broadway. Now, on Amazon the book Mary Poppins, by P. L. Travers, ranks 13,914th in popularity. By contrast, the 25th anniversary DVD of the Disney film ranks at #73 among movies. Quite a difference. The Tale of Despereaux comes in at #867 in books, while the various books in the Twilight Saga appear at places 2, 3, 6 and 12.
So it's safe to say that not too many kids or adults are reading the original Mary Poppins books, and that our main impression of the famous nanny everyone wants to employ, even though she never gives references and makes it a practice never to explain anything, comes from the work of Walt Disney and Julie Andrews. Therefore, any characters who appear in the books but not the movie are going to seem foreign to much of the theater audience. So I was preparing to answer obscure questions from Cleo regarding unfamiliar characters and events, although she should have been nearly as well informed as I was, since she read a couple of the books last year.
But I wasn't prepared for this.
In one scene Mary Poppins and the children visit Mrs. Corry, who runs a magical sweet shop, which in the book is depicted by this rather ordinary illustration:
This and all other photos from Jim Hill Media, except as otherwise indicated
...but in the musical is portrayed much more whimsically, possibly to inspire the audience to rush to the lobby during intermission and buy armloads of candy and treats:
And Mrs. Corry, who in the book is a widow dressed all in black, appears in the play as a voluptuous Caribbean woman in a bright orange and red confection of a dress with a bustle made of cupcakes and a tall orange headdress:
During the sweet shop scene Cleo turned to me and asked in a whisper if this was the same lady with the hat who'd sung for the President.
I had to think about it for a moment.
Caribbean woman?
Singing for the President?
What president? The story takes place in Edwardian England (even though Queen Victoria inexplicably and disturbingly appears in one scene).
It took me a second to realize which lady Cleo meant. Have you figured it out? Here she is:
Photo from The Daily Voice
Maybe we should lay off the Julie Andrews for a while...
