Review: Mary Poppins at the Liverpool Empire *****

Author PL Travers actively disliked Disney’s Oscar-winning screen version of Mary Poppins with its dancing penguins, (in her view) overly sugary heroine and twee sentimentality and, perhaps more incomprehensibly, the Sherman Brothers’ soundtrack of songs.

Apparently, she took a lot of persuading before agreeing to let Cameron Mackintosh create a stage version and only then with a whole raft of provisos – although she didn’t live to see the subsequent show premiere in the West End, so it’s difficult to know what the prickly writer would have made of it.

But while there’s much more than just an element of fun in this super Technicolor stage spectacular, it also honours the spirit of Travers’ creation, dipping beneath the singing, dancing, spoons of sugar and cheery chimneysweeps to also present the emotional core of her source story.

Anyone who has seen the film Saving Mr Banks will know that heartache and pain lie at the centre of the tale of a magical nanny who arrives on the east wind to mend a broken family.

The stage adaptation (by Downton’s Julian Fellowes) purposely foregrounds Mr Banks and gives him a rounded backstory which unfolds as he undergoes a transformative ‘journey’ through the course of two-and-a-half (plus) hours, from uptight and irascible product of a loveless upbringing to a man who rediscovers a sense of wonder in life and comes to learn just what is really important.

Read an interview with Michael D Xavier

Carefully navigating his character's more unpleasant traits (he's want to belittle and hector wife Winifred), Liverpool-born Michael D Xavier brings little-boy-lost sensitivity to the role as well as, as his story arc progresses, redemptive humility and a glinting sense of playfulness.

Still, it's Mary Poppins' name that is on the billboards, and Stefanie Jones is, ahem, supercalifragilistic as the neat, no-nonsense nanny.

The Australian actress nimbly sidesteps the inevitably long shadow of Dame Julie Andrews to bring a firm-but-kind hand to her Poppins, the elegant adventuress with a steel backbone under the charm and who isn’t falling for any nonsense from two brattish children desperate for attention. Jones commands our attention absolutely, whether she’s on stage…or above it.

Above: The cast of Mary Poppins. Top: Step in time with Stefanie Jones as Mary Poppins. Photos by Danny Kaan.

On press night, the Banks’ feral offspring were played by Ivy-Rae Battams and Elliott Norrington, and what we got was supremely confident and impressively flawless performances from a pair of young actors who already have West End credits in their biogs.

Meanwhile the tour’s Bert, Jack Chambers, being indisposed at the start of the show’s first ever run in Liverpool is giving the Empire audience the chance to enjoy the talents of understudy Ben Culleton instead. Culleton is cheerfully engaging, has a lovely, natural rapport with Jones’s Mary, and shows a daredevil spirit which takes him to places other actor-dancers can’t reach in perhaps the most audacious moment of an evening that certainly isn't lacking in spectacle.

In fact, the whole cast is terrific. The ensemble sparkles through Mathew Bourne and Stephen Mear’s choreography including brilliant set pieces like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and Step in Time, and the rich vocal sound it produces, buoyed by a classy orchestra in the pit, is glorious.

Lyn Paul, for so many years a regular on the Lime Street stage as Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers, is a warm and sympathetic presence as the bird woman – duetting with Jones in Feed the Birds (arguably the most beautiful of the Sherman Brothers’ luscious melodies, along with Chitty’s Hushabye Mountain), while Rosemary Ashe and Ruairidh McDonald have a lark as the comedy double act below stairs at 17 Cherry Tree Lane. There's a kitchen scene in the first half that's almost pantoesque.

Above: Lyn Paul as the Bird Woman. Photo by Danny Kaan.

Elsewhere, Wendy Ferguson gleefully chews the scenery in operatic fashion as the monstrous bogeyman nanny Miss Andrew, who arrives like the menacing spectre in Don Giovanni.

Talking of scenery, Bob Crowley's set design is endlessly inventive - the front and rear of the Banks' home open and close like the dolls' house in the nursery and the grandeur of the bank is rendered through an imaginative visual perspective, while later on in proceedings a giant, parrot-headed umbrella unfolds over the action.

There are some clever and slickly executed illusions from Paul Kieve and Jim Steinmeyer, and the lighting, sound and projection are all absolutely spit spot on.

Scene changes are all but flawless. It's true there was a miniscule timing hiccup on press night with the Banks’ children’s beds resisting their exit stage left towards the beginning of the first half, but it would be churlish to set that against the sheer gold star quality of the production as a whole.

As many, many other reviewers have written before me, Mary Poppins is practically perfect in every way. Which sets the bar incredibly high for the next 12 months on the Empire stage.