With "Mary Poppins," Edgewood School Embraces The Magic

Top: Ciaran Borné-Brennan and Eleanor Burke. Bottom: The ensemble is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Lucy Gellman Photos.

In the center of a green-and-white pinstripe nursery, Jane and Michael Banks linked hands with Mary Poppins, and closed their eyes tightly. Their knees rested on their sheets, butter-yellow and patterned with bouquets of bright flowers, but their minds were already elsewhere. When their mother Winifred stepped in, extending an arm past the folds of her dress, they appeared as one unbroken chain. 

“Anything can happen if you let it,” sang Mary softly, sending them slowly off to sleep. Two silhouetted portraits of the children peeked out behind her. “Sometimes things are difficult, but you can bet it-” And in the nursery, for just a moment, it seemed that the words were entirely possible. 

Magic—and a reminder to lean into the mess of living—came to Hill Regional Career High School Saturday afternoon, during a three-day run of Mary Poppins from the Edgewood After School Drama Club. Now in its 18th year and 17th production, the club is an outgrowth of Edgewood Creative Thinking Through STEAM Magnet School, where generations of students have jumped into musical theater with educator Jaime Kane. 

Jaime Kane: "This is the final layer."

Kane, who has taught at Westville Community Nursery School (WCNS) since 2008, started the program with no idea that it would continue for decades. She is quick to say that she doesn’t do any of it alone: the club has grown into a dedicated crew of parents, alumni, and Westville neighborhood artists, who chip in on everything from a multi-part set to the pit band, costumes, and lighting. This is its first time back on a stage since 2020; performances of Frozen, Jr. and Charlotte’s Web both took place outdoors. 

“I am so excited. I’m totally elated,” Kane said Saturday afternoon, as she checked props backstage between matinee and evening performances, stopping every so often to congratulate students who passed through the space. “This is the final piece of what they need. They’ve done the rehearsals. They’ve worked so hard. This is the final layer—the final thing is the audience.”

This year, Mary Poppins just felt right, she added. Each year, Kane looks for “some kind of sign,” and the magical nanny sailed in on her tricked-out umbrella at an opportune moment. As a teacher, Kane has a front row seat to how hard the past years have been for students, parents, and their teachers. She considered the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, but realized that the storyline was too dark for a school year already beset by educational and social and emotional challenges across the district. 

And then, while listening to Marry Poppins’ soundtrack months ago, she heard the song “Anything Can Happen.” She was instantly enchanted—and had a feeling that students could be too.

Nora Gilo-Tomkins as Jane Banks and Peyton Baker as her mother, Mrs. Winifred Banks. 

It turned out she was right—just as she has been for 18 years. Based on P.L. Travers’ series and film adaptation of the same name, Mary Poppins follows siblings Jane (Nora Gilo-Tomkins) and Michael Banks (Henry Marchand), who live in Edwardian London with their parents George (Lhord-Haaziq Howard) and Winifred (Peyton Baker) and servant Mrs. Brill (a wonderfully moody Jamese Hunter).

All is not well in the Banks home: George is consumed by work and rarely spends time with his children. Winifred doesn’t really have friends. The children are mischievous and chaotic because they want family time. For a play set over a century ago, it feels like a template for everything that is wrong with late-stage capitalism if there ever was one. 

After terrorizing a string of childcare providers, the Banks children wish for a perfect nanny—and are shocked when she arrives (Eleanor Burke as Mary Poppins). As she charms both the family and the audience, there’s some propulsive choreography, dizzying set changes, a pitch-perfect chimney sweep (Ciaran Borné-Brennan), and candy-flavored elixir that makes doing chores about ten times easier.

Top: Mrs. Corry's Sweet Shop. Bottom: Michael Abdenour, Lhord-Haaziq Howard, Peyton Baker, Nora Gilo-Tomkins, Henry Marchand, and Jamese Hunter.

From the moment curtains opened Saturday, a cast of 38 students welcomed the magic to Career’s dark auditorium, where chimney sweeps with pipe-cleaner tools, brightly buzzing honeybees, animated statues, bank tellers and family members at odds all found a way to coexist for the better part of two hours. No sooner had Jane and Michael moved into the spotlight with their tailored wish list for a nanny than the story was rolling into action, one gust of damp London air at a time. 

Along the way, actors showed off their skills, British accents, and the power of a community coming together to make a piece of theater. When George Banks tore up his children’s list and threw it into a cardboard fireplace, an invisible pair of hands was ready behind the scenes, to make it look as if the scraps of paper had been whisked away by the wind.

When Mary Poppins stepped forward with a spoon and glass medicine bottle, Nora Gilo-Tomkins and Henry Marchand gave her a run for her money, skidding and slipping around the front of the stage until they gave it a chance. 

When the trio rolled into Mrs. Corry’s sweet shop, members of an ensemble appeared from nowhere, ready to spell out “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” letter by glittering letter. When Michael looked upwards at his father and asked “Were you ever a little boy?,” it seemed so startling and sincere that it took a moment to remember that Henry Marchand and Lhord-Haaziq Howard are both in seventh grade, and close friends with each other. 

At every turn, students held each other up, sometimes mouthing dropped lines across the stage when a silence went on for too long, or a question hung in the air, unanswered. Eleanor, who in real life has two younger siblings and an older sister at home, slipped easily into the role of caregiver, present as much for Mrs. Brill and George and Winifred Banks as for their children.

As she guided Jane and Michael through the park and righted sour attitudes with a spoonful of sugar, she made it clear how easy it is to find magic in everyday spaces, a lesson audiences were wise to take with them before the end of the weekend. So too as she acted alongside Bert (Ciaran, whose younger siblings Eliza and Eamon Borné-Brennan were also in the show), whose gentle friendship with her became part of the show's heartbeat. 

It was also often a reminder to lean into this messy thing called life—a lesson that is as much for grown ups as the third through eighth graders giving voice to it. At one point during the matinee, Mary and Bert had an awkward, blushing, hesitant exchange that ended in Bert springing off the stage, skipping down the aisle to laughs. At another, a cake-shaped prop went flying, and Peyton and Jamese began ad-libbing, their back and forth comfortable and easy. 

“That’s my cake!” gasped Jamese, staring as a delicate Robertson Ay (Michael Abdenour) stretched out on the stage, no match for the fallen cake.  

“That’s your cake!” responded Peyton shrilly, her eyes wide as she stayed in character, and calculated the time it would take to make another before guests arrived.  

“Y’all are terrible,” Jamese replied fully as Mrs. Brill, storming off in a huff as she glared at the Banks children. She gave it a beat as laughter rose through the auditorium and floated back towards the stage. 

Seated on the floor, Kane guided students through every moment, a headset fitted snugly over her thick crown of blonde curls. Guided by a clip-on light, she read each line in silence while mapping out the choreography with her hands. Back onstage, pint-sized ensemble members watched her intently, relaxing as soon as they remembered she was there, showing them every step of the way. 

“It takes a village,” Kane noted after the show. This year, dozens of parents, grandparents, neighbors, and Edgewood School alumni came together to make the show happen. In the process, they turned the drama club into a place where students learned to ask for help, to care for each other, to articulate what they needed and why they needed it. It made for a show where anything felt possible.

In that sense, it lives on as a perfect play for this year, as schools navigate a new normal, and the city remains a real-life stage for questions around poverty, reliable employment, class privilege, education, biological and chosen family, and the importance and accessibility of play that are all baked into the script. 

Mary Poppins may be set in 1910, but the Banks’ reckoning with a childcare crisis is straight out of 2023 (as is the fact that they are able to afford a nanny). George’s professional life is nearly blown to smithereens by capitalism, and saved when he puts his faith in a factory that runs on union power (shout out to Max Childress, whose depiction of a scrappy underdog was on point). On their long journey to resolution, the Banks siblings and Mary Poppins remind their viewers that a gentle and steady hand will get more done than a punitive one.   

In a series of interviews backstage after the show, several students said the play resonated with them, and had helped them offstage as much as on. Eleanor Burke, who is in the sixth grade and played Mary Poppins, said that the role of caretaker came easily to her, thanks to her two younger siblings. After playing a sheep in Charlotte’s Web last year, “I think it feels pretty fitting for me,” she said of the role. While students don’t yet know what next year’s show will be, she can see returning to the stage.  

“I think I take her responsibility,” she said. “I feel like I’m sort of taking care of everybody. It’s really fun!” 

“I think I take her responsibility,” she said. “I feel like I’m sort of taking care of everybody. It’s really fun!” 

She added that it’s a release from the stress of middle school. “I’m playing a different person, so I can let it go for a few hours,” she said. For her, the play is about “Just having the patience about everything. It’ll take some time.”    

For some of her peers, it was a chance to try on different characters for size. Peyton, an eighth grader who played Winifred Banks, said she has wanted to be an actress for years, and enjoys getting to play other people. Playing Winifred—who is more reserved and introverted than she is—gave her a challenge.  

“It feels really awesome because I got to go outside of my comfort zone a little bit,” agreed Jamese Hunter, a sixth grader who played Mrs. Brill. “It’s a pretty fun role. She has a little bit of a temper.”

Fifth grader Nora Gilo-Tomkins, who played Jane Banks, nodded as she listened. “I learned to be in someone else’s shoes,” she said. 

For other students, the school play is and has long been a celebration of friendship. All seventh graders, Henry Marchand, Lhord-Haaziq Howard, and Ciaran Borné-Brennan have acted together for years. It’s become part of growing up in New Haven. Even as they stood around backstage, all three packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, glad to be together. 

“I love being in plays,” Ciaran said. “I think mostly, even though there’s a ton of work, it’s worth it. I just like hanging out with my friends.”