Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011

Mary Poppins visits Garner

Ashley Brown was 24 when she created for Broadway one of the most iconic motion picture roles of all time. Anyone who has taken a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down knows that Mary Poppins looks and sounds like Julie Andrews.

Andrews won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1964 for her performance in the Walt Disney production.

"I knew I was stepping into very big shoes," said Brown, who originated the Mary Poppins role on Broadway in 2006. "I couldn't be Julie Andrews. I can't do what she did. It was amazing how she did it, but I couldn't be her. I had to bring Ashley to the role. I had to be Mary Poppins."

Brown kicked off the second season of Garner's Broadway Voices on Saturday at the Garner Performing Arts Center. The three-concert series also includes Susan Egan, the original Belle in "Beauty and the Beast," and J. Mark McVey, who is Jean Valjean in the 25th anniversary tour of "Les Miserables."

It was tough following Andrews' interpretation of Mary Poppins, Brown said. The stage version went back to T.L. Travers' books for inspiration, and so did Brown.

"There is a little more edginess in the books than in the movie," she said, adding, "We wanted to create a new sense and sensibility about her and have people fall in love with her."

Brown's received Outer Critics, Drama League and Drama Desk nominations for Best Actress for her performance. She later toured with the show and returned to the Broadway production this year, leaving in July.

She has been in demand, performing in Carnegie Hall in March as part of a salute to Judy Garland and again in October in "Irving Berlin: Rags to Ritzes." She also is making concert appearances around the country with symphonies or with accompanist, Brad Haak, the Broadway show's musical director.

In advance of Saturday's show, Brown said her Garner audience should not expect a middle-aged nanny with a British accent.

"They are going to get a Southern girl," said Brown, who grew up in Pensacola, Fla., singing with a children's church choir. Her first solo was "O Holy Night" when she was 6 years old.

She took her first voice lesson as a high school freshman and found a love of the theater. She bought a one-way ticket to New York City after graduating from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and expected to wait tables until she got her break.

That break came very quickly. Within a week of arriving in the city, she was cast in Disney's touring "On the Record." She later became the 15th Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" and auditioned seven times over four months before learning she would be the first Mary Poppins on Broadway.

"I'd look in the mirror and pinch myself. Why was I getting this opportunity?" she said. "There were literally thousands and thousands and thousands of actors who would have loved to have this role.

"Suddenly, I was 24 years old and leading the Broadway company of a new show. All I could figure was that this was God's plan for my life."

Brown has stayed busy. She was Maria in the Municipal Theatre Association of St. Louis production of "The Sound of Music" - another iconic Julie Andrews' movie role - receiving the famed theater's award for outstanding lead actress in a musical for her performance.

Her Garner concert included touches of Mary Poppins and other Disney songs, some jazz, and some standards, but she planned to sing only songs that mean something to her on a personal level.

"I really want people to leave feeling that they know me a little," she said.