Mary Poppins

Instead of going to school today, Nathan took a little field trip down to South Bank to watch Mary Poppins with Andrew.

Others may call it truancy*. Or playing hooky*. Or wagging*. But I see it as an opportunity to cultivate an appreciation for performing arts.

Since my participation in this outing ended after I dropped the boys off...

... I'll let Andrew tell you about their excursion.


So unlike Nathan, I did end up going to school today. No wagging for me (whatever that is). After class, Bernice and the boys picked me up, and we drove down to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. On the way into the theatre, we passed by a mural of Mary Poppins flying over the Brisbane skyline, and a very observant Nathan remarked, "She lives where we live!"

After we found our seats and sat down, Nathan and I decided to take some pictures as per Bernice's instructions.

Shortly after taking this one, I was tapped on the shoulder by an usher and informed that no pictures were allowed in the theatre.

We only took a few more.

As the show was about to begin, Nathan leaned over to me and said, "I'm excited and I might not be scared because I think I know what the old granny looks like!" I am still not exactly sure what he was talking about.

The lights dimmed and the curtains went up, and we thoroughly enjoyed the first act. Nathan had a great time watching the singing and dancing, laughing at the jokes, and clapping enthusiastically after each musical number. When the first act ended and we went out to the lobby, Nathan said to me, "I wish we could talk to Mary Poppins."

We made our way over to where they were selling Mary Poppins merchandise, and Nathan asked for an umbrella. For those of you unfamiliar with Mary Poppins, she has an black umbrella with a little bird's head on the handle. So I figured, sure why not. His umbrella is a little broken anyways. I said something along the lines of "Okay, let's see how much it is." Boy am I glad I said that. They were selling the small umbrellas for $50. FIFTY DOLLARS. For an umbrella. Ridiculous! Unless I can fly with with it like Mary Poppins does, I think $50 is a little much for a small umbrella. Thankfully Nathan was extremely gracious and agreed with me that the umbrella was not worth $50 and he did not need it. I briefly envisioned myself decapitating his toy parrot and jamming the head onto my black umbrella, but it didn't seem like it would be worth it.

We ended up buying a playbill for Bernice's scrapbooking stuff, and headed back to our seats for the second act. We enjoyed the second act even more than the first, and Nathan's second favourite part of the show was *spoiler alert* Mary Poppins flying up over the audience for the ending. (His favourite part was a scene in the first act where a servant makes mess in the kitchen and lights the seat of his pants on fire)

After the show, Nathan immediately headed for a bench in the lobby so he could sit and look over the playbill.

He has been singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious" nonstop ever since.

So there you have it! Quality male-bonding.


*Disclaimer: I normally don't condone this type of behaviour but made an exception this time because it was the only performance that suited us.