An unassuming sheet of paper with the Mary Poppins logo is stuck to the door. Outside are the dreary, soulless docklands of east London. Inside, in a space borrowed from English National Ballet, is an all-singing, all-dancing rehearsal room. A long corridor is lined with packing boxes and portable wardrobes marked “Mary” and “Bert”. One of the open boxes is full of well-danced black lace-up boots with heels: a promise of future delights. In the green room are bags, coats and snacks that belong to the musical’s large cast, who squeeze past us in T-shirts, shorts and leggings, lithe and supple, buzzing.
They’re heading across to the huge double-height dance studio – large window, wooden acoustic panels, bare-wood rehearsal stairs on wheels in the middle – to work on the production that’s coming to Dublin next month as the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre’s Christmas show. Around the edge of the room are a drum kit and keyboard, the director and stage managers’ long desk, shelves with props, rooftop “chimneys” and an old-fashioned pram. It’s busy but organised.
Richard Eyre, the former head of the Royal National Theatre in London, who’s sitting alongside the table, nods as he watches this almost entirely new cast work on a show that he originally directed 20 years ago. Produced by Cameron Mackintosh and Disney, this stage musical about the Banks family’s magical new nanny has collected stacks of awards since then, including two Oliviers and a Tony, and been seen by more than 15 million people, in English and 13 other languages.
James Powell, who is directing this touring production, comes over. “You’re here for the private little sneak peek. We’re starting with a scene in the house.”
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We’re among a handful of visitors for this intimate preview of scenes and songs from the Sherman brothers musical. There’s a burble of excitement: a big company showing off what they’ve been working on for several weeks. In the middle, in a green shirt, amiable and chatty, is Mackintosh, whom the New York Times once described as the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world. (He’s 78 today. Later, everyone sings a full-throated, harmonised Happy Birthday. It’s quite something.)
Mary Poppins and Bert, her Jack-of-all-trades friend, were made famous by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Disney’s 1964 film version of Pamela Travers’s novel. (The Australian-born British writer, who lived on Upper Leeson Street in Dublin in the late 1960s and early 1970s, disliked it so much that she wept at the premiere; it made her fortune.) The characters are played here by Stefanie Jones and Jack Chambers, who are fresh from playing the roles in Australia, their home country – although Jones turns out to have an Irish father, from Armagh, as she explains later. The rest of the cast is new to the show.
“We’ve made a few little changes even for this production since the last time we did it,” Mackintosh says as they set up. Eyre adds, “I think it’s got better and better. We’ve learned over the years.” Not major changes – just, as Mackintosh puts it, “‘Oh, I could do that just a little neater,’ or, ‘That’s missing.’
“When we did this production, which is very different from the original, we completely reorchestrated it,” he says. “I think the show became light on its feet and more magical in this new version. When you get a special group, like we have with this company, you want your material to reflect what they’re doing. And it’s idiosyncratic, parts of the show. It’s a musical play. And all plays really do get influenced by the actors who’re playing the part. They bring something special to it.”
There’s Super 8 film of me dancing in a nappy. Looking at it now, oh gosh, I was co-ordinated at a very young age. My mum saw that: ‘Let’s put him into dance’
— Jack Chambers
We’re sitting right on the tape on the floor that marks where the edge of the stage will be, so the action is up close. They start inside Cherry Tree Lane, where George Banks (Michael D Xavier) is determined to “remain the sovereign” of his family as Winifred Banks (Lucie-Mae Sumner) aims to bridge the gap in nanny requirements between her pompous husband and their spirited children (played today by Olaya Martinez Cambon and Oscar McCulloch, who are sparky and assured; the roles rotate among several pairs of children). Then Mary Poppins arrives and briskly takes over their world. The scene bristles and zips.
The full company belts into Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which segues into the gorgeous, melodic Feed the Birds, the Bird Woman (Patti Boulaye) duetting with Jones, and gorgeous harmonies coming from the 30 or so cast members edging the performance area.
In spare moments they’re grabbing a minute to change into hard shoes for the big number coming up: after a swift shifting into position of multiple rough-painted chimney tops, they give a glorious, belting, magical rendition of Step in Time. Chambers and the company are in full flow, with exhilarating tap-dance choreography, chimney brushes in formation, muscled legs in flight. Here at the edge it’s like being in the midst of the dancers, wrapped into the rhythm, the sound, the movement. It sweeps you up in its joy and skill.
“In terms of spectacle, that’s probably the longest dance number we have in the show,” Chambers says afterwards. “It’s one of my favourites.” Unsurprisingly, given his skill at old-school hoofing, he says he’s inspired by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. “I love that era of dance. It’s effortless. It’s charming.”
Chambers started dancing when he was three, copying his older sisters. “There’s Super 8 film of me dancing in a nappy. Looking at it now, oh gosh, I was co-ordinated at a very young age. My mum saw that: ‘Let’s put him into dance.’”
In 2008, when he was 19, he won the Australian version of the So You Think You Can Dance TV show. As well as performing, he teaches (mainly jazz and tap) and choreographs. He was also in Burn the Floor, the ballroom and Latin show choreographed by Jason Gilkison, who went on to become creative director of Strictly Come Dancing, on the BBC. (“I performed with a lot of the pros that are on the show,” Chambers says.)
So what’s this about Bert dancing on the ceiling? In stage performances, Step in Time leads into a section where he dances horizontally up the side of the stage’s proscenium arch, then tapdances across it, literally upside down, before descending the other side.
How does he do that? “It’s magic!”
A harness and lines are involved, of course. It is, Chambers says, “a bit of a little workout, because obviously I’ve got assistance going up, but it’s all about me doing prep positioning” to create the illusion.
There’s assistance to hold him up there, but to do a dance on the side or roof, with his legs in the air, “I’ve got to apply pressure to the wall and stick my hips up and activate my core, if that makes sense, to hit a plank. So I’m walking up like that, and when I’m upside down, applying pressure to a board to make sure I don’t fall. And then when I come down, stretch that back up. But, yeah, it’s quite magical. It’s a thrill.”
When he was learning to do it, the first step was “an apparatus here on the ground that allowed me to go upside down, just the feeling of tapping against gravity”, before going on to do it at a height. “I can only ever have a go of it once we’re in the theatre, when we’re teching, very close to showtime.”
There are other spectacular parts of the show, including Mary Poppins flying, of course.
Stefanie Jones, who grew up in Brisbane, has no theatre in her background – she’s a violinist first and foremost, she says. “Both my great-grandfathers played violin, so I guess that was in my blood. I’ve always had an ear for music. I was very tuneful. Mum said, ‘When you were very little you would sing along to the radio in the car, and you’d harmonise.’”
I played a lot of Irish music on my violin growing up, as a bit of a release from all my classical training. And I was in Once, the musical by Glen Hansard. So I’m very abreast of that kind of music, and it just makes my heart soar
— Stefanie Jones
A family friend saw an ad looking for Les Mis kids when Mackintosh brought Les Misérables to Australia, and she auditioned. Jones wasn’t a stage-school kid – “just violin and singing at home – but I was definitely that kid who was always prancing around. Then suddenly I was in a musical. My parents had never really been to the theatre, and on opening night they were just wowed.”
Jones being Australian is pure serendipity, a fact born of one of those life-changing events that turn on a moment of chance. Her father, Derrick Jones, was born in Lurgan, in Co Armagh, then emigrated to Australia with his parents, William and Annie, when he was nine.
“My grandfather had taken a trip to London to buy boat tickets for the whole family to go to Canada,” she says. “When he got there Canada House was closed, and he didn’t have enough money to come back for a second trip, so he just went around the corner to Australia House. He got back to Ireland and said to my grandma, ‘We’re going to Australia.’ And she was furious, had no idea what to expect. But Dad always says it changed the course of their lives for the better. They had a really good life in Australia.”
They’ve some distant Lurgan cousins, Jones thinks. “We could get in touch them through Nana. My nana, she’s about to turn 102.”
Mary Poppins’s month-long run in Dublin will be her first time in Ireland. Her parents and brother will fly from Australia to see the show and spend Christmas with her when she has a few days off: they plan to drive north to “see where Dad grew up. I’m so excited”. Her parents visited on a honeymoon world trip; her father is in his 80s now. “It’s been a very long time.”
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Jones also hopes to get to see Riverdance, which she grew up watching. “I also played a lot of Irish music on my violin growing up, as a bit of a release from all my classical training. And I was in Once, the musical by Glen Hansard. So I’m very abreast of that kind of music, and it just makes my heart soar. I’ve brought my violin over with me, because I thought I couldn’t go to Ireland without my violin.”
She’ll be in the UK with Mary Poppins until at least the end of 2025, with her partner, also an actor. “We’re having a very new adventure. There’s no linear trajectory” in this business, “so you have to learn to let go and trust the process and go where the wind takes you, which is a nice metaphor for this show.”
She and Chambers auditioned together for the Australian production, in unusual circumstances. It was during Covid, and “a bit of a stressful process”, Chambers says later. Australian border restrictions meant he couldn’t get to Sydney or Melbourne for the auditions, and after making a self-tape, and a live videocall with the creative team, they wanted to see him in person. Ironically it was easier to fly him and “the Mary candidate” to London, where Mary Poppins was in the West End.
“From what I understand, Cam [Mackintosh] will not cast a Mary and Bert together if he hasn’t seen them in the room, because it’s really integral to get that chemistry. And they couldn’t get us in the room in Australia. In London we met the creative team, saw the show. And then, the next morning, we did a three- or four-hour audition of Stef and I. It’s probably the longest audition I’ve ever done.”
When he discovered the “Mary candidate” he was flying out with, he was delighted. “We actually met as kids. My first professional show was Sound of Music in Brisbane in 2000. I was Kurt von Trapp at the age of 11. Stef was Brigitta and she was nine. That was the last show we did together. We’d gone on our careers.
“I found out just before flying that it was Stef, and I was so relieved, as was she. Because we at least knew each other, and there was that familiar energy, that we knew we had each other’s backs going over to what is a fairly intimidating sort of scenario. And I think our story and connection probably was a good plus for them as well.”
Mary Poppins is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, from Wednesday, December 11th, to Saturday, January 11th
