Mary Poppins - Prince Edward Theatre

Great video above - thanks Jon for posting. The house in the original production was fabulous only equalled by Norma Desmond's house in Sunset Boulevard at the Adelphi. The fold out house looks effective especially for a tour but at WE prices?

Haven't seen this yet, but I will. Surprisingly (apart from weekends) there is LOTS of availability on the Delfont Mackintosh website. Perhaps it's a quiet time in the WE before the Christmas holidays and this show will appeal to families during school holidays. But for a show that has just opened I am surprised it is not more heavily booked.

I enjoyed this in it's original incarnation at this theatre although I didn't think it was "practically perfect" in every way. Too long and some clunky transitions between big set pieces and the new and old material. Quite frankly I am surprised to see this revived as I seem to remember the original show did not have the long run that was expected of it, although it did play 3 years in London, but went on to play 6 years on Broadway. But Cam Mack has not produced anything original for years and seems content to keep flogging Les Mis, Phantom and the family stuff to death. Oliver will be next...….

Went with a friend who hadn’t seen the original production and he loved the house - he felt a little let down in the ‘Jolly Holiday’ number. He was expected a chalk painting type image to light up the floor of the stage for them to ‘step into’!

On another note - that Stage review is just pathetic. How sad to come away with nothing from the production!

I broadly enjoyed this but why is the cast so WHITE?! I understand this is set in Victorian-ish London but the only person of colour of note is a broad patois-speaking shop owner? There weren't even a couple of performers of colour who auditioned even suitable to drop into the ensemble? In 2019 London? They have to do better.

Thank you for your reply! All four seats of the slip box are available for the day I want to book so I was wondering whether seat 1 is better than seat 4 (there would be no one in front of me whose leaning might obstruct my view).

Saw this on Friday night & really enjoyed it. Definitely agree with theatremonkey about this being a 5 star cast in a 4 star show. Zizi Strallen & Charlie Stemp were endlessly charming and had great chemistry. Some really fantastic dancing as well from both them and the ensemble.

The show itself felt a bit too long for my taste, maybe one or two songs could have been cut. I couldn’t tell you exactly which ones should be cut because they didn’t even stick out well enough for me to remember them! ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ was a personal highlight for me. Seeing Mary fly at the end was also incredible.

I never seen any production of Mary Poppins before this, so I can’t really compare the staging to previous productions, but I liked the set, I thought it was really well designed.

I was sat in E34 of the stalls, far on the left hand side. Slightly restricted view of the near side of the stage, and my neck was constantly craned to the right for the entire show. Still a great seat though, close enough to get a great view of all the actors faces, though probably too close if you don’t want the magic of some of the tricks to be made clear.

I saw this last Tuesday on the Children in Need Gala Night - not that it was advertised as that when I booked it.
I did enjoy the show and I'm very glad I've seen it, but I didn't love it. I was very excited going in to see it, so perhaps my expectations were too high.

Firstly Charlie Stemp was fantastic as Bert, I really liked Zizi's MP and the kids were great as were their parents and the lady playing the cook.
I wasn't keen on the statues and the Neleus storyline, or the Playing the Game part which was very creepy. I hadn't seen it when it was last in the West End, so perhaps would have looked on the show differently if it was something we'd been taken to see when I was younger.

Overall I think it was too long, I wasn't keen on the new Stiles and Drew songs and I think mostly I was wishing they'd kept a bit more of the film stuff in. Which I realise isn't really the point of the stage version, but it did definitely feel like something was missing.

I did love Step in Time, I wish all the dancing had been as good as that sequence. Bert's walk around the proscenium was fab too, and I really loved Mary's final flight, which thankfully worked.
The cast are definitely better than the production I think, as mentioned above. I'm glad I've seen it, but don't feel the need to see it again sadly, and I was sure it would be something I returned to.

Good For you.

I suppose it was easy for you because you were selected as winner. I was kept on hold, the walking man paused a few times and after about 25 mins I got the message it was now closed.

Last week I won it, I was directed to the website, selected the date and it offered me the seats. It also had an option to reject the seats, which I did, hoping for a better one. At that point I could not select anything else. I tried to select different dates and it just froze. So even though I won the lottery, I could not book tickets.

There is always next week. Or the one after LOL

This really does describe how I felt about this too!

Mary Poppins was probably my favourite film as a child and was going for the nostaglia purposes but it was just SO different and I didn't really connect with it.

Play the Game was creepy but I also thought Spoonful of Sugar was quite creepy in this too as she was giving everyone medicine to make them behave and it was all a bit sinister. I'm sure in the film there was actually a reason for the medicine and it wasn't just to drug them all!

I know they're from the books and understand why they've moved away from the film, but sadly I just didn't enjoy it as much as I would have done had they transferred the film story to the stage. I was intriguied to read about P L Travers' conditions to Cameron Mackintosh in terms of what she'd allow him to do for the stage version. I even went into the musical knowing that it wasn't going to be the same as the film and was excited to see something different, but it just didn't work for me. 

That's one reason I didn't care for this production, the over extended musical sequences. In the movie 'super' is performed as an impromptu excursion, and is all the better for it.

It was easier today but not without issues. I logged on the lottery from 2 different devises x2 browsers each. 2 went to ordering tickets very quickly other two wasn't winning.

The first one offered me back stalls tickets. I rejected those and from than on the system didn't allow me to chose another day & another seats. I had to leave the session. Lesson: accept first offer.

The second one offered me dress E tickets. I was happy with those. When it came to payment it kept rejecting my email. The time ticking down, after several attempts I put my partner's email address in. That sorted it.