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Mary Poppins, the musical
Opening night: March 27th, 2010
Seen: June 17th, 2010, Circustheater, Scheveningen

It took me some time to write this review. This show was one I had been looking forward to for a looong time. We managed to get tickets on sale, great seats, gorgeous weather, so when we left home we were in a good mood. Until we reached the theater and found out that Noortje Herlaar, who was our favorite in (and winner of) the TV search for Mary Poppins, wasn’t playing that night. Bummer! Alternate Mary was Sophie Veldhuizen, who came second in forementioned search, great voice and a very very sweet person – but I wanted to see Noortje *stamps foot* :p

To give you an idea, here’s Noortje and the cast of Mary Poppins, performing at the Dutch ‘Musical Awards Gala 2010’, where Noortje won the ‘Best Newcomer’ Award for her parts in Urinetown and Mary Poppins.
Hats off to the kids, they are awesome! I wish I had such confidence at their age!!

Well, we couldn’t change a thing about Noortje not performing, so we got to our seats and hoped for the best. Unfortunately I felt a headache coming up, which got worse and worse. I was nauseous and the whole show I was afraid that the contents of my stomach would end up on the lady in front of me. Not the ideal situation to really enjoy a show. (It turned out I had some bug and was really sick for three days, followed by Sabine, Rink and last Manon, but we had no idea about all that misery at the time we saw the show).

The girls had so much fun and what I did see was a very enthusiastic cast, gorgeous colorful costumes, beautiful set and awesome staging of the story I only knew from the movie. The stage version differs at some points, but I guess it’s following the book and not the movie.

My hero that night – as Noortje wasn’t there – was William Spaaij who plays Bert. He was the star of the show, without a doubt. He reminded me of Dick van Dyke a lot. Sophie (as Mary) was good. In fact her character stayed ‘good’ through the whole show. That’s probably the difference with Noortje, who can give Mary a mélange of characteristics. She is playful yet serious, sweet yet strict, all the things I admired so much in Julie Andrews. Sophie was a sweet Mary from beginning to end. I can’t judge too strict, as this was one of Sophie’s try outs, her official ‘opening night’ wasn’t until August 19th. So let’s blame it on the lack of experience playing the part. Her voice was beautiful and that’s quite important too 🙂

My favorite song is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (in ‘Dutch’ Supercalifragi-listicexpialidasties, as there are no Dutch words rhyming with ocious :p), especially the choreography where they’re signing the letters is something that makes my jaw drop, every time I see it. It must have been hard to learn all the different movements (we tried at home and failed miserably, lol).
The video can’t be embedded, so you have to watch it at YouTube.

Bert gets his chance to shine in the song ‘Step in Time’. Unfortunately there is no video of the Dutch production, but many thanks to Disney on Broadway for sharing the video of the Broadway production!.

William Spaaij said in an interview that initially he was fine when he did the stunt for the first time, but 30 min later he had to run for the toilet as his stomach suddenly went on strike :p
He’s been doing the ‘ceiling tapping’ for several months now and his body got used to it, but he learned not to eat too much before the show 🙂

All in all, a great show, which can only get better if I get a chance to see Noortje as Mary! I’ll let you know as soon as it happens… watch this space!

To conclude this post.. what would a theatre visit be without meeting some of the stars *grin* We waited at the stagedoor (it was Cccoooold) and both William and Sophie jumped in when we asked for a picture. I can’t believe how sweet those people are. Probably exhausted after the show, but still willing to have a talk and pose for pics with their fans. Thank you guys, you rock!

Posted in Blog, Theatre by Antoinette at Saturday, August 28th, 2010
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