Flying Mary Poppins into the Prince George Playhouse required flying Jonathan Stich in from Louisville, Kentucky.
The technician from ZFX Flying Effects has been all over the world working with theatre companies, churches, schools, music acts, anyone who wants to put a little distance between their feet and the earth. Who wants to see Mary Poppins merely plod into the Banks children's lives by clomping down the street to ring the doorbell? No, audiences want Mary Poppins to fly in under her umbrella.
"We have never flown a person. Not in here. No," said director Judy Russell. "We have flown set pieces before, but even that hasn't been all that often: Spamalot, Sound Of Music."
When the newly renovated Prince George Playhouse reopened in the 1990s, it included a 50-foot flytower, the tall part of the building that offers the stage an overhead cavern into which people and objects can be hoisted. The first play to launch this new feature was A Flea In Her Ear presented by Prince George Theatre Workshop Society. That play used the flytower to suck up a large backdrop, allowing for almost instant changing of key scenery. But the process was so difficult due to design flaws that it was never used again until Judy Russell's production company took over operations there in the past couple of years and the production staff put special attention on the problem.
"One of the biggest issues was the curtains," said Russell. "The tower itself is excellent. The germans (areas tot he sides of the main performance area) are not. The style of curtain they installed is not proper. You really need proscenium curtains, or the audience can see everything you're doing when you're using the pulley systems."
It's something they committed to overcome for Mary Poppins.
"I did some fist-pumps when I drove up and saw the tower," said Stich. "I've worked in all kinds of conditions. Our company has flown actors with only 14 feet of clearance. We can get flying effects to happen in a school cafeteria. But this is total luxury, compared to that."
He said his company has done everything from providing some supplies to Cirque du Soleil to actively working on Broadway productions, but they will also happily work with middle schools or community theatre companies. Prince George is by no means the most remote place they've ever come.
"Some shows are routine for us. I've flown everything from a six-year-old Peter Pan to a 66-year-old Peter Pan," said Stich. "Wizard Of Oz is another one that we get called in on quite often, and now that the rights to Mary Poppins have been released to the world after its Broadway run, we expect we're going to see a lot of business for that script."
No two productions are the same, he said, even if it is 100 Mary Poppins shows in a row.
"Every production has its own vision and its own unique space, so it's my job to hear what the director is saying and adjust our equipment to get the effects they want," he said.
The two main characters who take to the skies in Mary Poppins, the Judy Russell version, are Burt and Mary played by Adam Harasimiuk and Amanda Spurlock respectively. Both were taking turns suiting up in the safety-centric body harnesses that would be clipped to slender cables that would then be manipulated like human puppets by local backstage crews Stich was training to operate the rigging.
"It feels as close to weightlessness you can get without going into space, I think," said Harasimiuk. "It really is like flying. This is a hell of an opportunity for us, as actors. And we actually get to do something up there, there is movement we have to do, it's not just raising us up and down, so that's amazing to experience."
It even wowed the cast, the first few run-throughs with harnesses in use. They had to do it a few times just to dull the effect for the actors on stage.
"Both these actors are really athletic, they are fit and physically capable in the harnesses, so that's excellent for me, it gives the whole process some options," Stich said. "I'm not just saying this, because I see hundreds of these shows, but I really think the audience is going to love what they do."
Mary Poppins is flying high at the PG Playhouse from now until July 31.
