Anthony Drewe: There's Something About Mary Poppins

About the author:
Lyricist/librettist Anthony Drewe and his writing partner, composer George Stiles, had just debuted a musical version of "The Ugly Duckling" called Honk! when producer Cameron Mackintosh asked them to submit new songs for a stage version of Mary Poppins. Fast forward 12 years ! and Drewe and Stiles have made it to Broadway, winning praise for the seamless way their new songs and additional material blend with and enhance the beloved tunes by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, composers of the 1964 movie version. Drewe and Stiles became best friends as classmates at Exeter University and abandoned plans to attend teacher training college to write musicals together. In addition to Honk! which, in a 1999 production at the National Theatre, won the Olivier Award over The Lion King and Mamma Mia!, the duo has written Tutankhamun, Just So and Peter Panand are working on a new musical called Soho Cinders. The charming lyricist recently explained the joyful creative process that resulted in Mary Poppins.

I remember I cried in 1966 when I heard Walt Disney had died. I thought it meant that there would be no more cartoons. My favorite feature animation then was the recently released The Jungle Book. Back in the '60s it was customary to have a souvenir brochure when you went to the cinema. I still have my Jungle Book brochure, and I remember pawing over it as a kid, knowing by heart the names of the vocal artists for each animated character, thinking it a strange coincidence that King Louis was played by Louis Prima and also being surprised that the two men responsible for the songs had the same surname, Sherman. For some reason it didn't strike me, as a six-year-old, that they might be brothers!

Wind the clock forward to 1994. My writing partner George Stiles and I had just had the first production of our musical Honk! when we were summoned to London and told that we were being considered as new songwriters for the planned stage version of Mary Poppins. Of course, our first question was, "Why does it need new songs?" Our second question was, "Why aren't the Sherman Brothers going to write new material?" By then I knew they were brothers. In a way the answer to both of these questions was the same: The author of the books on which the movie is based, P.L. Travers, was by all accounts a particularly single-minded woman who was not backward in coming forward with her views on the film. She had initially suggested that British musical standards like "Greensleeves" and "Knees Up Mother Brown" could have been used, rather than a batch of songs written by Walt Disney's resident songwriters.

Despite the success of the film, Travers would not relinquish the stage rights to Disney, and it was not until a fortuitous meeting with producer Cameron Mackintosh in the late '90s that she finally gave in and allowed a stage version to be developed. Cameron's masterstroke was in persuading Travers, in the final years of her life, that the stage musical had to include the Sherman Brothers songs, but in order to placate her anti-American inclinations, suggested that the songs could be augmented and reworked, if necessary, by a British team.

George and I set to work immediately on our pitch for the job. We watched the video of Mary Poppins and felt that the moment when Mary measures the children in the nursery and finds them to be "noisy, troublesome, short-tempered and untidy" compared to her own measurement, "practically perfect in every way," was an incident begging to be musicalised. We immersed ourselves in Shermandom, George listening to the style of their music while I studied their lyrics and noted where titles fell, how often titles were repeated, the alliteration and wordplay they employed, and so on.

Two days later, our first song, "Practically Perfect," was completed. George arranged it in the style of the Sherman Brothers, and our friend the actress Claire Moore sang it in her best Julie Andrews impersonation while I sang the lines for Michael Banks. That was all back in 1994. Cameron loved the song, and we then played the waiting game. A deal needed to be struck between Cameron who held the stage rights and Disney who held the film rights as well as the Sherman songs.

It was not until 2002 that we got the go-ahead to write Mary Poppins. Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes was brought in as the book writer, and George and I were presented with a detailed synopsis drawing on both the movie and the P.L. Travers books. It was clear that, in addition to our writing some new songs, several of the Sherman songs were going to need to be reworked, musically and lyrically, in order to tie them in to the new book and drive the story forward. It was these latter songs that were particularly daunting. How could we rewrite such classics as "Jolly Holiday," "Step in Time," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "Chim Chim Cheree" and hope to get away with it?

As work proceeded, our focus was less on this concern than with simply making the songs work for the story we were trying to tell. At all times George and I strove to retain as much original material as possible. We even had access to songs that were written for the film but didn't make it into the final cut, just in case there was more genuine Sherman material we could plunder. At all times we were trying to make the score sound as organic and cohesive as possible—hoping that it would be hard for anyone to tell who wrote what.

In some instances, such as "Step in Time," our work involved justifying a song's placement in the show by giving it more of a point of view. In the movie, Bert simply pops out from behind a chimney stack and says, "Come on mates, step in time" as the cue for an extended song-and-dance number on the roof tops. In the stage show, our notion is that chimney sweeps, under the leadership of Bert, are like sooty-faced guardian angels, keeping an eye on the children of world from their lofty perches up amongst the chimney pots. We get into the song with a new bit of "Chim Chiminee" from Bert:

"Chim Chiminee Chim Chiminee Chim Chim Cheree
Now guardian angels you don't often see
They're not high fallutin', not grand nor aloof
Nah, they're covered with soot and they're up on your roof.
Chim Chiminee Chim Chim Cheree, see it's true!"

At which point a new musical section introduces the Sweeps, who take up the call:

"Brush away the dirt and soot, brush away your tears
Cobwebs that aren't swept away hang around for years.
In all weathers up all hours, we can see for miles.
Our idea of heaven is a night out on the tiles."

Lyrically, I then took the "Step in Time" idea but introduced it in a slightly different way so it is more about guardian angel intervention than simply dancing in time to the music:

"We may look like a motley crew
smudged with tar and grime
But when you need a helping hand
We try to step in
Try to step in
Try to step in
Just in time."

This then leads us into the more familiar sections of the song from the film:

"We will step in step in time
We will step in step in time
Never need a reason, never need a rhyme
We will step in step in time."

We wanted Mary Poppins to have an active involvement in the sequence, so she and Bert then get a new bridge section using "Step in Time" literally, as a passing moment:

MARY:
"Childhood is a step in time
Parenthood's the same
Never miss a chance to get it right"

BERT:
"Don't it seem a perfect crime
Don't it seem a shame"

MARY & BERT:
"When the steps aren't going
As smoothly as they might"

Which gets us back into some more cheeky, chappy Sweeps singing, and an extended dance break:

"That's when we step in step in time
That's when we step in step in time
Never need a reason never need a rhyme
That's when we step in step in time."

A further link utilizes a repeat of the introductory musical section:

SWEEPS:
"Just remember when you're low
Feeling in the wars
Someone's up in your chimney"

MARY:
"And it isn't Santa Claus!"

SWEEPS:
"If you need us, if you don't
Doesn't make much odds
We'll be watching over you
Brushes, brooms"

BERT:
"and rods."

Bert then gets his spectacular walk around the proscenium arch to the chanting of "Over the roof tops," which leads us back into a final build of the "Step in Time" choruses to end the song. These alterations enabled us to deliver a textually more meaningful show-stopping sequence, George's new musical sections meant the song could be expanded in a way that sustains without seeming too repetitive and his variations on the theme gave Stephen Mear and Matthew Bourne the scope for some spectacular choreography.

These same principles were applied to the other songs we altered. In a way, because of the challenges that songs such as "Supercalifragilistic…," "Jolly Holiday" and "Step in Time" presented, they are the ones I'm most proud of in the show today.

As a footnote, I would like to add that, after the writing process was over, George and I were finally introduced to the Sherman Brothers, who were delightful. Their encouragement, support and friendship have been more than we could ever have hoped for. It's not every day that you get to meet your childhood heroes—and it's even rarer that you actually get to work with them.