Review: ‘Mary Poppins’ at Paper Mill Playhouse is ‘Practically Perfect’

Gliding through the air powered by an umbrella, everyone’s favorite nanny, Mary Poppins, is back in the New York area, that is until the wind changes course.

The Paper Mill Playhouse version is a vast improvement on the production that graced Broadway not too many moons ago. The cast is stronger, the book by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame is tighter, and the score has the revisions that critics and audiences collectively asked for in the previous undertaking.

Last year’s Regional Theatre Tony Award recipient, the Paper Mill Playhouse, located not far from Manhattan in Millburn, New Jersey, has, with Poppins, opened its third Disney production in recent years, after the hugely successful “Newsies,” before that transferred to Broadway, and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

read more