Auditioning for Mary Poppins

More on audition coaching:

With the ballad chosen for the Phantom of the Opera audition, we turned our attention to the Mary Poppins song. We were looking for an up-tempo with a classic-book feel.

As well as the usual show songs, Gershwin, Porter and Novello are usually a useful source of classic material.

The client already had a song in her database that we both felt would fit the bill. Don't Look At Me That Way is a song by Cole Porter from the show Paris. It's an up-tempo, flirtatious song saying "I love whatever you do, and I particularly lose control when you look at me like that."

This client is Canadian, and is quite used to singing with an American accent. However for Mary Poppins I felt it best to sing with an English accent. So we spent a couple of sessions exploring the differences between the accents. She is remarkably quick, and after two sessions had the accent just about nailed. The particular dialect for this show is an interesting one - it's not hyperlect, and it's not quite Standard British (as I hear it), but a gentle cross between the two.

Having nailed the accent, we focussed on the character. Mary Poppins is not flirtatious, although she can be "fun". So I made one small adjustment to the song:
The opening lines of the chorus (I think you're great, I think you're grand And I don't mind if you hold my hand) were sung straight, but the change came in the title line (But don't look at me that way). Instead of being sung as a come-on, we changed the subtext to "Bert, stop that at once!" it gave much more of the flavour of the British nanny (think Jo Frost in Supernanny) and worked very well in the song.

This is the kind of work I really enjoy - altering the song subtext to suit the job you are auditioning for. I'll be posting more coaching session descriptions like this in the future.

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