Our George Banks, Tod Harrick, writes about his thoughts about Mary Poppins, his role, doing this as a family, and the magical Kitsap Forest Theater:

Virginia Woolf wrote that “on or about December 1910, human character changed.” The story of the Banks family in Mary Poppins, and George in particular, is that change – of modernity – in microcosm. He is struggling mightily to be what he believes he should be, but in his heart he knows that if the child he was saw the adult he has become, he would hate himself.

To me, Mary Poppins is only a fantasy at the very surface. At its core, it is a very real, very human tale. The rigid class constraints of Victorian England are breaking down. Sweeps are coming into the parlor, nannies are kind, and Mary Poppins brings the magic of emotional freedom and with it unlimited potential. To us, living in a time and place of much, it may be difficult to remember, but Mary Poppins reminds us how magical personal freedom can be to those who do not have it.

And in the same way, The Kitsap Forest Theater is a microcosm of what to me makes the Pacific Northwest great, the combination of awe-inspiring natural beauty with vibrant human creativity and communal effort. Every time I walk down that path to the theater, through trees that could only grow here, cascading ferns evoking primordial landscapes, and – when they are blooming – Rhododendron blooms like floating pink clouds, and enter into the natural amphitheater surrounded by giant firs and birdsong, with the gentle rush of the creek in the background, I am transported into another world.

The first time we came here, it was because we thought it would be a great place to introduce theater to young kids, giving them the chance to see a show without having to sit inside a dark room for 3 hours. We saw Beauty and the Beast. We were right. The picnic lunch and trails to run on at intermission filled gaps in nicely and gave our children the opportunity to really enjoy their first musical. The show itself was top-quality. Not knowing much about the theater at the time, we assumed it was a professional production, and were amazed to learn after the show that everyone involved was a volunteer. We’ve remained amazed at the ongoing commitment of talented, hard-working people this theater inspires. It is what keeps us here, and is one of the reasons that, after 90 years, it is still thriving and growing.

The ads for this place say, “family-friendly”, and I can’t stress enough how true that is and how important it has been for us as both audience and as we’ve become part of the company. The shows involve whole families. Children grow up in this theater into kind, committed young adults, and having so many wonderful teens (and adults) as role models for our children has been yet another unexpected blessing of being here.

I’ll close by noting that presenting a story of a broken family becoming whole has driven home for me at a visceral level how positive an experience involvement in outdoor theater has been for our own family. With walks through the woods and along the creek, game nights in the cabin, building sets, and rehearsing scenes together, it’s like classes and summer camp for the whole family, plus we get to be in shows…great shows! The last night of tech rehearsal, my 11 year-old daughter Jasmine came to me and said, “you know, I just realized that – metaphorically – the lark is Mr. Banks,” to which I had to reply, “I never thought of that. I’ll use that.” And that’s the best thing. As a parent, you get chances to teach your children things or to watch them learn things, but the opportunity to learn things, about life, art, creativity and hard work -- with your children is, “much rarer, and much more valuable.” And we cherish it. Hope to see you at the theater!

When you combine top-notch directing, choreography, music directing, costumes, special effects and sets (throwing in a lot of imagination) you create a magical show that is "practically perfect in every way"! Record audiences are loving this production of Mary Poppins and we have received many positive reviews from audience members. Here are several:

"We just had the greatest experience going to see Mary Poppins. The play was so well done, and the whole experience of the theatre was amazing! We definitely recommend this adventure!!!!" Alta M, facebook comment

"Just got home from seeing the Mary Poppins musical with my daughter and her family – their Mother's Day gift to me! I love live theater and knew nothing of this very special venue! Loved the production and the locale and will be back!" Evelyn C., facebook comment

"Mary Poppins was fun. I loved the way some of the "special effects" were staged. As for the venue, it will be perfect for Shrek. . . . I thought everything was very well organized, including the parking." T.J. B., first time audience member, to be actor in Shrek this summer!

We also received a review of the whole "forest experience" from a long-time audience member that is worth sharing:

"My husband and I and our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter just attended a performance of Mary Poppins at the Kitsap Forest Theater. This was our 26th time at the theater and our 8 year old granddaughter's 11th time – we come to both plays each year. We discovered the Theater in 1994 when we moved here from Virginia and fell in love. The setting is beautiful and every performance that we have attended has been outstanding. We moved around the first few years to find the perfect seats and now we are at the trailhead with our picnic and gear at 12:30 pm so we can be the first ones down to ensure that we get our seats!"

"We have brought many friends and other family and they have all enjoyed themselves. The second time we brought our granddaughter (age 3) we brought one of her friends. Once we got settled and had started our picnic she explained to her friend that "first we eat lunch, then they come out and sing and dance, then we have dessert and they sing and dance some more. Then we all clap and we get to go down and meet the people, but don't step on the ferns".  We all were speechless that she remembered so much from her first visit the year before."

"When the Kitsap Forest Adventure Camp started she was in the first group and loved it so much that she asked at Christmas that year if we would be sending her again. She tells all of her friends what a great place it is. I am still amazed that more people don't know about the Kitsap Forest Theater when I tell them to come. They are missing out on a one-of-a-kind experience and a highlight of our summers."  Christina M.

Opening weekend of Mary Poppins was very well received by enthusiastic audiences. Here are excerpts from Michael Moore's review in the Kitsap Sun (May 25, 2015):

“… the Mountaineers Players and director Craig Schieber have constructed a fine and representative "Poppins" out there in the trees … an admirable and often highly successful take on a very complex and difficult show to pull off, even in the best of conditions. Schieber, musical director Amy Beth Nolte and – especially – choreographer Guy Caridi and costumer Barbara Klingberg have made the setting and the story work together … finding simple and inventive ways to represent the magic in the familiar tale of a nanny who rescues a dysfunctional English family … a very good, well-cast and well-rendered show, with lots of nice little touches, pretty constant color and movement and a few visual surprises. And you'll hear a strong collection of voices, and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it little bit of offstage choral backing during "Feed the Birds" that is as lovely as anything I've heard in my years of KFT campouts.”

“Meagan Castillo makes a fine and plucky Mary Poppins, in fine voice and right at home playing the character's slightly more flinty stage persona. She's in competition with Jenny Dreessen (as Mrs. Banks) and Dawn Brazel (doubling as both the Bird Woman and Mrs. Andrew, the "Holy Terror") for the show's best voice. Tod Harrick, suitably uptight and conflicted as Mr. Banks, and the two Banks children – Lydia Salo as Jane and Joseph Martinez as Michael – are charmingly precocious. ... As affable Bert, the sooty jack-of-all-trades who sort of shepherds the show along, KFT first-timer Merrill Matheson is capable in both voice and on hoof.”

“. . . [the] production numbers – particularly the dance-filled "Step in Time" – are visual treats. Schieber and Klingberg often find appealing and ingenious ways to turn people into props: Kites, toys, even the merchandise in Mrs. Corry's "Talking Shop" all become characters, adding measurably to the show's visual appeal.”

Michael Moore’s review also includes an advisory for families with very young children:

“. . . the show – which draws more heavily from P.L. Travers' original stories than from the 1964 Disney movie that gave us "Spoonful of Sugar," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "Let's Go Fly a Kite" – works against itself. The songs, and the production numbers built around them, are wonderful. But the long periods spent dealing with the Banks family's domestic problems are anything but kid friendly. The very thing that makes the stage musical superior to the movie is the thing that's completely lost on the younger play-goers. So there's lots of restlessness . . .”

There are three more weekends to see this magical show – come early to picnic and enjoy the natural surroundings. Tickets here. 

Forest theater hosts the magic of ‘Mary Poppins'

By Michael C. Moore, Kitsap Sun, 5-20-2015

SEABECK — Whether or not you've seen the stage adaptation of Mary Poppins, chances are pretty good you've never seen it the way the Mountaineers Players are about to show it to you.

That's partly because of the outdoor theater's limitations when compared to a fully appointed indoor venue. Its special effects are the centuries-old trees, the massive rhododendrons and the gentle gush of nearby Chico Creek. The special-effects marvels you might've seen previously, in professional theaters with endless resources and huge coffers, won't be so much in evidence at Kitsap Forest Theater, where the stage is dirt and the backdrops are bark.

Those differences are no reason, though, for audiences to enjoy the "practically perfect in every way" musical any less, according to director Craig Schieber.

"The trick is to look at our limitations as possibilities," said Schieber, who directs one of the venerable, Seattle-based company's two productions at the rustic amphitheater each summer. "We have to look at getting the audience to use their imaginations, and give them other ways to see the magic."

By "venerable," we mean that the Mountaineers have been staging plays at Kitsap Forest Theater since 1923.

And the "magic," Schieber pointed out, can come from the show itself — including all those supercalifragilisticexpialidocious songs — and the Mountaineers' performances.

"The script is rich enough, and the songs are rich enough," Schieber said, "that the show can carry itself. But we have a great cast, and we have our great costumer (Barbara Klingberg).

"And we'll try to have a few surprises, to help with the magic," he added, grinning.

Amy Beth Nolte, Schieber's musical director, added, "That's the biggest challenge, figuring out how we can still surprise an audience, take people who are wondering, ‘How are they going to do that?' and surprise them with how we do it."?

"We've created a few things," Schieber said. "When we can do an effect so that it's cool, something that the audience wouldn't have expected. We'll try to come up with a really unique way of doing something when it needs to be done."

Schieber is, of course, no stranger to making the unlikely happen in the forest setting. He has, in recent seasons, pulled off a more-than-credible version of the decidedly urban Annie. And despite its seemingly KFT-friendly title, there was a lot more than woods to mounting Into the Woods.

"You do what you can in regards to the special-effects bells and whistles," Schieber said, "but mostly we have to rely on telling the story."

That story — the one in the stage version — owes a lot more to P.L. Travers' original "Mary Poppins" children's books than it does to the 1964 Disney movie that cemented the superstardom of Julie Andrews and made a household mega-word out of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." (A suggested homework assignment prior to seeing the play is a screening of Saving Mr. Banks, the excellent Disney film about the cajoling it took Walt Disney to get a not-very-cooperative Travers to let him make the movie at all.)

"The stage play has more depth, and more story line," Schieber said of the book by Julian Fellowes, which retained the Robert B. Sherman-Richard M. Sherman songs — and some of the situations — from the movie version, but re-purposed them to fit into the revamped story line. (Melodist George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe wrote additional songs to flesh out the musical.) "The books are a lot of short little bedtime stories, and the show takes several of them and builds a story around them."

"And there is a lot of music," Nolte added. "The songs are very full. It's all dancing, all singing all the time."

To that end, Schieber said, the company's consistently excellent choreographer, Guy Caridi, has been working double-time.

"I can say that this is the most time ever spent on choreography at this theater," he said. "Guy will even be out there himself, as one of the dancers."

While the story still centers around Mary Poppins (KFT veteran Meagan Castillo) and her affable friend Bert (newcomer Merrill Matheson), there are several new characters in the stage reboot, and there's much more work to do for the members of the Banks family — Tod Harrick and Jenny Dreessen as George and Winifred, Lydia Salo and Joseph Martinez as the precocious youngsters. Of those four, only Salo is a newcomer to the forest stage.

Then there's the more than 30 various chimney sweeps, policemen, kite-fliers, bank clerks and nannies swirling their way in and out of the story, and on and off the stage, to add to the experience. And the magic.

Tickets available here.