Yesterday, My Year Was Made

Yesterday afternoon my mom and I went with our neighbors to see Mary Poppins at the Keller Auditorium. It was absolutely fantastic!

Actually, it was more than fantastic. It was...

We got shirts that say that. It certainly does sum it up.

This was the second Broadway play I've seen. I'm so glad we got to see it!

They did change the storyline quite a bit, but I think it worked better for the stage. Like instead of the creepy penguins in the "It's a jolly holiday" scene, they had dancing statues. I preferred the statues. And the Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious (wow... I typed all that!?) scene was very different, but tons of fun and full of energy.

One thing I found especially neat was the use of light. In one part, Mary released a bird. When she let it go, they used a light as the bird and made it look like the bird was flying off by moving the light. Hard to explain, but it was really neat. Another neat thing they used it for was rain. It looked incredibly real!

While I was watching, I found myself paying extra attention to things like how they moved and spoke. I noticed that their movements were often completely over the top, but to the audience they looked normal. Sometimes as a performer I'm scared to exaggerate my movements, but I know it's necessary. If you hardly move, the audience won't see it. I also noticed that I could easily hear most of the consonants when the actors spoke. I know that if they spoke like that in normal conversation it would sound strange, but on stage they have to or else it's hard for us to understand them. In some ways it was reassuring to me that even if I think I'm going over the top, it's to help the audience follow the story.

One thing that made me very, very excited was in the very beginning when all I could see was the conductor of the pit orchestra. He had a baton! And he was conducting! An orchestra! Just think... One day that could be me! Yes, that made me quite happy.

If any of you get a chance to see Mary Poppins on stage, definitely go see it! It was an incredible show and if I could, I would totally see it again.