Page 34 - Flathead Beacon // 12.9.15

EVENTS 36 MOVIE REVIEWS 37 PAWS & CLAWS 40 SIDE DISH 42
Arts&Entertainment
Anything
Can Happen
if You Let It
White sh Theatre Company opened family classic
“Mary Poppins” on Dec. 3
BY CLARE MENZEL
Eloise McKeon, Jackson Schindler and Amy Chisholm star in Mary Poppins this month. JUSTIN FRANZ | FLATHEAD BEACON
Ever since the Dec. 3 opening of the White sh Theatre Com- pany’s holiday production “Mary Poppins,” there’s been a bit of Edwardian magic in the air at the O’Shaughnessy Center. It likely has something to do with local actors Amy Chisholm and Mikey Winn, who take to imagined London skies as the magical nanny Mary Poppins and chimneysweep Bert, Mary’s wise, cheeky friend.
In classic Mary Poppins form, Chisholm glides on and o stage with her iconic umbrella throughout the second act. Winn never oats through the sky, but he does take a merry jaunt up the side of the stage to dance across the underside of the ceiling and skip back down to the stage oor during “Step in Time,” one of many delightful group musical numbers in the show.
Such a feat would seem routine to the chimneysweep who shares some of Pop- pins’ mysterious magic, but it’s a novel act here in the Flathead, where no actor has ever before walked upside down, dangling inverted in the air, during a performance.
Chisholm and Winn’s airborne adven- tures are made possible by ZFX, the Las Vegas-based complete service provider for ying e ects that the White sh The- atre Co. hired in 2008 to help produce Peter Pan, the rst Flathead Valley show featuring ying actors.
“We are a company of ‘ rsts,’ you might say!” wrote Artistic Director Jesse DeVine in an email.
ZFX ying producers came to White- sh in the weeks leading up to the show’s opening to install on the O’Shaughnessy Center’s ceiling the complicated rigging systems that hoists Chisholm and Winn.
ZFX specialists also spent two days train- ing the actors in ight and showing the theater company’s tech department and volunteer ight crew how to work the sys- tem during performances.
Bert displays his magic during “Step in Time,” a song that gives Jane and Michael Banks, played by Eloise McK- eon and Jackson Schindler, a glimpse of life broader and more beautiful than what they’ve experienced in their small, grounded, and privileged existence as children of English banker George Banks, played by Christoph Lawton, and his wife Winifred, played by Charity Ambrose.
And though Poppins and her umbrella lift o multiple times during the show, her most theatric ight precedes “Any- thing Can Happen,” the closing song with the inspirational refrain, “If you reach for the heavens, you get the stars thrown in.”
“When most people hear ‘Mary Pop- pins,’ they think of the unbelievably beautiful movie with Julie Andrews,” DeVine said earlier this year. “‘Anything Can Happen’ is not from the movie, but I think it is truly inspirational and it hits my heart every time I hear it.”
The songs opens with a precious line from Jane and Michael – “You can be a butter y,” he begins, “Or just stay a larva!” she nishes, wiggling across the stage like a bug – who have nally and completely learned the lessons and fam- ily values that Mary came into their lives to teach.
The entire 33-person cast joins Mary Poppins and the Banks family to belt the song’s culminating choruses that cele- brate choosing the super over the super- cial and chasing one’s dreams – some- thing nobody ever regrets.
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DECEMBER 9, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM