Bowie musicals are known for bringing the play to life with the crowd cheering along. Considering that Tommy and Tarzan were such great successes, the audience learned that whatever musical the Starlight Theatre Company decided to perform next would be one people would be raving about for the next couple of weeks.

The Starlight Theatre Company decided to perform the classic musical, “Mary Poppins,” with senior Madeline Sparkes taking on the role of titular Mary Poppins.

“The Banks have been looking for a nanny and [Mary Poppins] just appears out of nowhere,” Sparkes said. “[Mary Poppins] has magical powers and it amazes the kids and she leaves once she recognizes that they don’t need her anymore.”

New tech theatre teacher Cortney Hall predicted producing the musical would be hectic due to her prior experiences as a previous Bowie student, but she says it’s a totally different story as a teacher.

“I’ve done musicals with Bowie as a student so I was ready for the chaos,” Hall said. “It’s just a whole different ball game when you’re a teacher because there’s a lot of things I didn’t know had to be done so there’s a lot of learning on the fly.”

The actors put their best choral voices and acting into their practices and they had to work in a fast paced environment.

“The actors themselves started with rehearsing the music first so there was a lot of choral rehearsal and then they split up to where half of them would learn a song and half of them would go learn blocking or choreography,” Hall said. “In January when they got back there was a lot of putting everything together in the last minute. It was fast paced but it was also really fun.”

Sparkes put in the extra work to bring the musical to life to make sure her character came off as authentic as possible.

“This is a family-friendly show so being able to develop the back-story that she has and why she’s there and what relationship she has with each character and bringing that to life,” Sparkes said. “In order to bring the dialogue to life is something that I had to work on personally a lot, especially with the “Bird Woman” scene. It’s just finding that connection with each personal relationship and portraying the correct message behind each one.”

Considering how hard the Starlight Theatre Company worked, it was no surprise that spectators enjoyed the performance.

“I really enjoyed the musical because it was very well choreographed, had wonderful exciting music performed live by the orchestra,” junior Taylor Brown said. “The whole cast were each so incredibly invested in their characters and did an excellent job playing them.”

The musical included many scenes that are notable to the audience, however the “Step In Time” scene was a fan favorite.

“My favorite song in the musical was probably “Step in Time” because the choreography was entertaining and the cast seemed to really enjoy performing it,” Brown said.

The “Step In Time” scene was a scene that the Starlight Theatre Company loved putting together and performing because of the dancing and the flying.

“It’s just a lot of fun and it’s student choreographed and [assistant principal] Mrs. Leos was in it and it’s just a really fun number,” Hall said. “The chimney sweepers have a really cool tap dance number and that’s the number where Bert walks on the ceiling and then Mrs. Leos did her tap solo and there were projections and flying in that number.”

Although Hall thinks there is always something to improve, she says working on and performing the musical was fun.

“Overall I think this is one of my favorite musicals,”Hall said. “On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it an 8 because there’s always things that you’d want to change afterwards. But this was a really fun show.”