Michael D Xavier on Poppins to Pie Jesu ahead of Liverpool Empire debut

He’s been in some of the biggest shows on both sides of the Atlantic – but for Michael D Xavier, his latest role takes him right back to the earliest years of his stellar stage career.

In 2003, while he was playing the lovelorn young Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, he spotted a poster inviting people to take part in a reading for a new musical.

“It’s more than 20 years ago now, so my memory is a bit vague, but I don’t believe they told us what the show was originally” he says. “I think we just turned up, and they were ‘here you go, here’s the script, we’ll have a bash through the music and read some scenes’.”

The unnamed musical turned out to be Mary Poppins. And while Xavier was involved in its inception, it’s taken more than two decades for him to appear in the all-singing, all-dancing, all-flying audience-pleaser himself.

The Liverpool-born actor plays prickly patriarch George Banks – although he admits there was a rather awkward moment when his agent first called to say the producers were keen to see him for the musical.

“I was like ‘they do know I can’t dance as well as they need me to?’” he reveals. “And he said – not Bert! And I was, oh, the dad. Oh what? I suppose I am that age!”

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He may not be chim-chimineeing across the stage with a brush on his shoulder, but his George is also no mere bit-part in this Poppins which, while it's packed with the Sherman Brothers' glorious melodies, looks to author PL Travers’ original novel for narrative nuance rather than being a straight screen-to-stage transfer.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh has even been known to describe Mary Poppins as George’s story.

“It’s gives us more of an opportunity to show George’s arc,” Xavier agrees. “He has the biggest transformation of all the characters, and that’s the job of magical Mary to come down and help the family to repair.

“It’s actually really moving, the show, if it’s done well, it’s really quite powerful.

“Because we all have a connection to family, we all sit in a role, or several roles, within our families, that we can relate to in the show, whether you’re a child or a parent or a partner, sibling. You have that association with all the characters and you can feel for them and see the fragmented nature of that family; there’s obviously a profound connection to your personal life in that sense.”

Above: Mary Poppins and Bert kick up a storm with the chimney sweeps. Photo by Danny Kaan. Top: Michael D Xavier as George Banks and Lucy-Mae Sumner as Winifred Banks. Photo by Matt Crockett.

Talking of family, when the 48-year-old sets foot in the Empire next month it will be the first time he has been inside the Liverpool landmark since he was a child, when his mum took him to see a ballet on its massive stage.

While a traditional classical ballet wasn’t really the young Michael’s thing, he reveals he developed a love of acting from being a small boy, despite not having any other performers in the family.

“My parents are so unmusical and so un-performy, if that’s a word!” he laughs. “My mum’s dad was a very good violinist, and my dad’s mum was quite musical, she played the piano.

“But no one was a professional in our family. They say sometimes it bypasses the immediate generation, so maybe there’s a perfect storm from my mum’s dad and my dad’s mum, a combination of genes there.”

His singing ability singled him out, first at his Liverpool primary school, and then at St Francis Xavier – from where he took his stage name (his real surname is Smith) and where he was “forced into the choir”.

Xavier recalls: “It was an all-boys school, quite academic and sporty, and not very artistic then, so it was a bit like ‘oh God, you’re in the choir, you suck’. That was the attitude. So, it was a bit embarrassing to be in the choir.

“I had to sing Pie Jesu. God, this is all coming back to me now - I’ve got PTSD! We had some kind of final night of the term or the year, and I was asked to sing. I was just so embarrassed about the idea of it, I was nervous about standing up in front of all the kids and they’d laugh at me because it was a classical song and it wasn't cool.

“I remember being really quite anxious about it, and on the night just being grateful that I got through it without forgetting it. But it was a really traumatic performing experience.”

So much so that it put him off singing completely for a long time.

It was only aged 15, having moved to Cheshire with his family and enrolled in Knutsford High, that he was persuaded to take to the stage again, this time as Teen Angel in a school production of Grease. From there he never looked back.

Above: Michael D Xavier who is making his Liverpool Empire debut as George Banks in Mary Poppins.

After graduating with an acting degree from Manchester Met, his first big break came in comedy musical Pageant in which he played Miss Great Plains.

The show opened at the King’s Head in Islington before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre.

“It was my first West End job, and was really informing of what it’s like to be in a musical and work at that level,” he says.

“I went from working in a bar...I was working in a bar in Covent Garden and doing the show as well. I still kept a few shifts while I was in the West End too, just in case! But I blindly thought, this is it, this is my big break - I’ve finally cracked the West End and now I’m never going to stop working.

“Then of course, the job came to an end, and I went back to the bar, and it was a real crash down to earth. It was tough. I didn’t have an agent either at the time.”

Happily, it turned out to be only a temporary crash to earth. And over the past two decades Xavier has forged a busy and very successful career as a leading man in shows including Mamma Mia! (he was Sky on the inaugural international tour), Phantom of the Opera, Oklahoma!, Into The Woods and Love Story (he received Olivier award nods for each) and The Sound of Music.

In 2016 he was cast as Joe Gillis opposite Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum, later transferring to Broadway.

More recently he returned to My Fair Lady, this time to play the irascible Henry Higgins, a role synonymous with another Liverpool actor – Rex Harrison.

He’s also forged a parallel screen career including roles in Gentleman Jack, Outlander and Grantchester.

From bartending to Broadway, it's all good experience to impart to the next generation of performers whom he is nurturing through his MX Masterclass company which he set up in 2016 and which offers West End quality training in musical theatre and screen acting at weekly sessions in London, with mentoring from people in the industry like himself.

“We want the kids who want to do it and have a real natural passion for it,” he says. “Because then you have a room full of like-minded kids, who all love musicals, who all want to be performing, and it creates an amazing atmosphere when that happens.

“It’s almost like alchemy, bringing the elements together with that same vibe and that same energy, and it’s really tangible and exciting.”

Above: The cast of Mary Poppins. Photo by Danny Kaan.

While things have improved in recent years, there can still be a bit of sniffiness about musical theatre from some industry quarters.

And while he describes himself as ‘an actor who can sing’, Xavier is a passionate and staunch defender of the genre and those who work in it.

Sometimes, he says, the book (script) of a musical isn’t very strong, and “you have to be a really good actor to make that work. But you also have to sing, have musical timing, and be able to dance and move around in time to music choreographically. An actor just had to act.

“I’ve done everything now – plays, Shakespeare, film, television, adverts, radio, and of anything I’ve done, musical (theatre) is the hardest because you have to juggle all these elements at the same time.

“People don’t get enough credit for that in this industry, and it really bugs me when people go ‘oh, you’re a musical actor’. I’m proud to be able to do it, because it’s really difficult to do.”

Empire audiences will see all those elements come together into a magical whole when Mary Poppins arrives, umbrella in hand, to kickstart another busy year of big musical productions in spectacular fashion.

It will only be the second time Xavier has performed in his birth city, after appearing as Rock Hudson on stage at the Unity in Capital of Culture year.

“It will be the very first time I’ve played the Empire,” he confirms. “It’s mad, isn’t it? All these years, and all these different shows.”

Spit spot…Mary Poppins flies in to the Liverpool Empire from January 14-31, 2026. Tickets HERE