Mary Poppins is back in town in a new play written by Clare Norburn of The Telling and featuring Lottie Walker of Blue Fire Theatre as PL Travers. Practically Imperfect imagines a meeting between the creation and creator.
Where: touring through March – details here.
Mary Poppins meets her creator, PL Travers, in this collaboration between Blue Fire Theatre and The Telling. Where did the idea originate?
Lottie: Our two companies have been talking about a collaboration for some time and it was only last year that we both had the time to put something in the schedules.
As both The Telling and Blue Fire Theatre tend to produce historical, biographical pieces with music the big question was : who would be the subject? We had a pretty long list to start with, which bodes well for future work for us but PL Travers was a clear winner.
She was such an interesting woman and a mass of contradictions. She also had an incredibly diverse writing career and her private life was fascinating to say the least.
She was also an incredibly private person and we’ve tried to respect that aspect, whilst also telling a story that we hope shows her in a new and more sympathetic light.
Clare: Lottie has told the story of our initial discussions but just to add that what interested me about PL Travers is that hers is a life which you wouldn’t expect from the writer of Mary Poppins.
The Saving Mr Banks film about Travers’ fall out with Disney is a fascinating story but so too is her dysfunctional relationship with her adoptive son, Camillus (who only finds out he is adopted when his twin turns up and finds him in a Chelsea bar. Camillus drops out of University, drinks a lot and ends up in prison for 6 months because of driving without a licence.
Then there is her broken childhood in Australia, due to the early death and challenging behaviour of her alcoholic bank clerk father, her time as an actress before she discovers writing but also her challenging personality: her biting rudeness to children, the public and the press, her series of relationships with both men and women: a series of father figure men – and love triangles with women which tended to end with the throwing of much crockery!
Her very private nature is reflected in that her very name is deflecting and out of reach: PL Travers. She was born Helen Lyndon Goff and took the name Pamela Travers (Travers was her father’s FIRST name) and decided on PL Travers when she published the first Mary Poppins book in 1934, expressly because she didn’t want the book to be judged on the basis of the sex of the writer.
The show includes music of the Edwardian period. How did the two of you collaborate in choosing what to include and perform?
Lottie: The premise of the song choices is that these are the songs that Travers wanted to be in the Mary Poppins movie; some of her choices are on record; not all of them made the cut – the movie would have been a disaster had it used some of the songs she chose!
The lion’s share of the music goes to Joanna Brown who is a fabulous actor-musician and is playing Mary Poppins in the play, but there’s a tune or two for me to sing as Travers too.
Clare: Travers wasn’t at all musical but that didn’t stop her writing to Walt Disney in her series of very long letters with advice about what music should be in the movies.
She didn’t like the Sherman brothers score and felt that music should be Edwardian popular songs: she cited “Lily of Laguna” as a good song for Bert. We have taken this idea and the wonderful composer and arranger worked with me on a list of similar songs which I then chose to fit with the narrative and he has arranged them for voice and accordion, played by the brilliant Joanna Brown.
In my play, the music is the first thing that Pamela and Mary bond over – for Pamela it is an amazing thing to “reclaim” her version of Mary Poppins through the kind of music she would have chosen from the film. But the music also is used as a trigger to take her back into her memories.
Travers’s version of Mary Poppins is rather different from the one most of us know from the classic Disney film. Which version does yours draw on, or is she a character we haven’t really seen before?
Lottie: Good question! the original books are much darker than Disney’s adaptation and Travers – despite her success – did not have a happy life so it feels natural to say that the original source material is closer to the play.
But – there’s a real element of Mary Poppins as Travers’ alter-ego. So it’s possibly a version of the world’s most famous nanny that hasn’t been seen before.
Clare: I have taken elements from both the book and the film but also given Mary a kind of 1960s vibe and bite too. The play is set in 1966 so our director Nicholas Renton and brilliant costume designer Hope O’Brien have reimagined a look for her that is 60s vintage but with an homage to Mary Shephard’s drawings in the original books and the silhouette of the film but very much updated.
And my Mary Poppins has a decided 60s take on sex and lesbianism. Given that Travers lived only 10 minutes walk away from the famous Gateways Club and had relationships with women earlier in her life, it felt interesting to explore a more modern take on Mary: one that challenges Pamela, just as the original Mary Poppins challenges the Banks family.
You are presenting what is essentially a 90-minute show with an interval. What drove that particular artistic choice?
Clare: I never like to overstay my welcome! And I think there is plenty you can say in 90 minutes. Travers’ Mary Poppins books usually start just before Mary Poppins arrives and end with her disappearing – with a series of adventures in between and that is kind of the model for the play.
“The adventures” are flash backs into Pamela’s life to explain the person she is but also Mary has a hidden motive in having appeared in Pamela’s study that we only learn just before the interval – and the second half is the working out of that motive alongside more “adventures” and flashbacks that “up the anti” and get to the centre of Travers’ private life. You’ll have to come and see what that motive is.
What else is in the pipeline for you as separate companies?
Lottie: Blue Fire continues to tour Chopped Liver and Unions, which is on the road in February, March, April, July and October this year. We’ve also a couple of performances of Marie Lloyd Stole My Life that haven’t been officially announced yet and are working on a brand new piece for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Our podcast Famous People You’ve Never Heard Of has new episodes in the pipeline including an exciting audio drama. We’re keeping busy!
Clare: Beyond this tour (5 Feb-20 March) which is going to Wolverhampton, Cardiff, Swansea, a weeks run at Oso in Barnes south London, Colchester, Glasgow, Lancaster, East Horsley and Exeter), we have plans for a reimagined play with music about the composer Henry Purcell which will be touring plus a week run at Oso from 18th April to 6th June).
Beyond that, I am writing a new play about the impact of AI combined with Scottish traditional music will be workshopped later this year.