Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Smart children know parents have to be trained to behave. Savvy, pint-sized domestic reformers will be thrilled with "Mary Poppins," a rare family musical that spends most of its ample running time exhorting parents to stop working, take care of their long-suffering spouses, discover their inner supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and go fly a kite with the kids. And parents? Speaking as someone who can always use help in that department, the ministrations of a magical nanny—emotionally inaccessible but practically perfect in every other way—sound good to me."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...The lavish production is based on both the P.L. Travers classic stories and the Disney film. It features a score comprised of the peerless Richard and Robert Sherman brothers’ movie hits, with ideally synchronous new and revised numbers by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, plus a crisp, exceedingly witty book by Julian Fellowes, a slew of enchanting, human-scaled performances and several highly theatrical out-of-body experiences. But it is rooted in a recognizably dysfunctional family desperately trying to become whole."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Young children bounced in their seats, adults gasped with surprise and the applause that accompanied the overture's opening notes didn't stop until after the enigmatic Mary Poppins (the delightful Ashley Brown reprising the role she created on Broadway) flew away for the last time. Sharing the acclaim was the irresistible, gravity defying Gavin Lee - as lithe and likable a song-and-dance-man as you'll have the pleasure to watch - who plays jack-of-all-trades Bert, the role he originated in London and on Broadway."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...Though the spectacle, dance, and singing give good value, most of the wit of P.L. Travers's Poppins books--based in delight in nonsense--has been excised. And five new songs render the show even less faithful. "Being Mrs. Banks" highlights the parents' relationship, and the empty "Anything Can Happen" is nothing more than an upbeat vehicle for a huge production number. The barbs of the books' tart, disapproving, wildly imaginative, and funny nanny have been replaced with the ho-hum psychology of an ordinary family."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...Mary Poppins being who she is (and Disney being what it is), you expect fair amount of whiz-bang special effects from the show. Those expectations are surpassed. Mary flies in ways we’ve never seen on stage over the course of 20 years reviewing lavishly produced theater. Bert forever vanquishes Lionel Richie from association with the phrase ‘dancin’ on the ceiling,’ in a marvel of physics-defying dancing."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...just as, decades ago, the Disney film did everything movies did best to engage our imaginations, so does the Disney play extend itself to deliver all the magic offered by modern stage technology: kitchens that self-destruct and re-assemble themselves, friendly park sculptures and resentful nursery toys that come to life, origami mansions flanked by post-impressionist landscapes (accomplished by a few dozen scrims and winches)."
Chicago Free Press - Highly Recommended
"...Musicals don’t come much more critic-proof than “Mary Poppins.” Everyone’s favorite nanny alighted in the Loop last week already on a helium high, buoyed by Disney’s advertising onslaught and plenty of preexisting affection for the 1964 Oscar winner starring Julie Andrews. Thankfully, if you decide to skip vacation so you can afford the tickets, you won’t be disappointed by this whirling dervish of a show."
EpochTimes - Highly Recommended
"...It is hard to contemplate how the magical moments of a Walt Disney film can be translated to a live stage presentation. We have seen many of these in the past and each time, audiences are amazed. This one is no different. The set and costume design by Bob Crowley are marvelous and the lighting effects by Howard Harrison add even more magic. This is not just a musical play, it is in fact a musical, theatrical experience."
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...Mary Poppins” is the best family musical to play the Loop since “Beauty and the Beast,” and its warmth and spectacle exceed that show by a wide margin. The opening night audience was heavily populated by children up way past their bedtimes and I didn’t hear a discordant whine from any of them. They were totally entranced by the show, but then so were their parents and guardians."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Bursting with color, catchy tunes and impressive choreography, this "Jolly Holiday" with Mary and her friends serves as a great reminder of the joy that theater can bring to all ages."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...As usual, Disney would prefer the stage technology do the work rather than the actors—actors, after all, run the dangerous risk of changing from night to night—but Poppins’ female performers still manage to transcend the often extraneous stage-CGI. (I loved both sinister Ellen Harvey as a bad-cop nanny and Valerie Boyle as a fusty cook, while prim, golden-throated Brown makes hay of the title role.) If you can’t afford it right now, the words of Disney trickster-god Jiminy Cricket cascade to mind: Let your conscience be your guide."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...The magic and mystic of Mary Poppins (is she myth or an angel from heaven?) is deftly played by Ashley Brown while Gavin Lee’s Bert guides us through the journey of the Banks family’s awakening with panache. We are totally engrossed and richly rewarded having spent a few hours in Poppins’ world where anything can happen if you take a spoonful of sugar."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...With magnificent sets that resemble illustrations from a Maurice Sendak children's book, costumes that range from turn-of-the-last-century period perfect to Cirque de Soleil's most colorfully and creatively outlandish, real dancers (this is not swing choir dance steps but a bona fide hoofer show!) first rate performers and musicians and squeal inspiring wire work, "Mary Poppins" the stage musical becomes its own beguiling incarnation."