It's a jolly holiday with Mary - Ms. Poppins takes flight in a stellar production

Up on the roof, bringing down the house: Ashley Brown and Gavin Lee. Center: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Bottom: Over the rooftops, step in time: Brown, Abigail Droeger, Michael Gerhart and Lee.

All due respect to the beloved Julie Andrews, but her rendition of Mary Poppins bore only a passing resemblance to the fascinating and often more than a bit scary nanny of P.L. Travers’ magical novels. The movie was far heavier on the spoonfuls of sugar than those formative books. This never sat well with us.

With the hugely hyped new musical version of Mary Poppins, the iconic Mary is restored – somewhat – to her original tartness. This is still Disney’s Mary Poppins as much as it is Travers’. Co-created by Cameron Mackintosh, it is a spectacular creation from start to finish. It also contains two of the biggest showstoppers to come out of musical theater in the last decade. Yes, decade. To use Mary’s words and deem and “Step in Time” practically perfect is to sell them short. These are blow-the-roof-off, all-hands-on-deck dance numbers so absolutely wonderful that the show comes to a complete and utter halt to accommodate standing ovations. Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear's choreography has the ingenuity and wit of Susan Stroman’s famed grannies-on-walkers kick line in the “The Producers”, the grace of Jerome Robbins’ Sharks and Jets dance in “West Side Story” and the eye-popping razzle dazzle of Michael Bennett’s finale in “A Chorus Line.”

Step in Time” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” are the kind of numbers that hook young theater-goers for life and remind grizzled vets why we fell in love with the art form to begin with.

Mackintosh compresses Travers’ novels into a few key, morally simplistic episodes. He wisely keeps much of the original music and lyrics by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman: “Feed the Birds” remains a gorgeous duet that echoes flight in its soaring crescendos; “Chim Chim Cher-ee” is a haunting narrative thread of foreboding magic. He also adds some new songs by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, additions that lack the complexity and depth of the earlier work: “Being Mrs. Banks” is a Victorian ode to Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, “Anything Can Happen” a peppy empowerment mantra you’d expect to find in the Self-Help section of Border’s.

But Mary Poppins the whole is far bigger than the sum of its sometimes less than perfect parts. It has the potential to do wicked (and “Wicked”) business in Chicago. Somewhere, producers are gnashing their teeth because it’s only here through July 12, at which point Mary is committed to fly to Cleveland.

The core of the production is of course Ashley Brown, a Mary of precisely calibrated mix of imperious self-assurance and warmth.  As for Gavin Lee’s Bert, he is a chimney sweep (and lamp lighter, and park painter) to fall in love with. A paradoxical mix of gangly and graceful, he is also the heart of those all-important dance numbers. Both Lee and Brown created their roles on Broadway. Along with consummate showmanship, both radiate something else: Palpable joy.

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.