Sing-A-Long Mary Poppins, Cinema 21, NW 21st Avenue

Saturday, March 5, my friend Sarah and I enjoyed ourselves very much at the 2 p.m. Sing-A-Long Mary Poppins at Cinema 21, over in my old neighborhood. Dimwit that I am, I completely forgot to take a photo of the marquee! I have until March 20 to make it back over there to take a photo and attend the Sing-A-Long Grease--it's at 7 p.m.

While we waited in line to pick up our will-call tickets, Mary Poppins herself came out to speak to me--I had on a headband sporting two long-stemmed flowers and a butterfly because people were encouraged to dress up in costume. She wanted to talk flowers-on-your-hat for a minute or two. Delightful. Soon this charming little girl appeared with her grownups. Seeing Mary Poppins literally stopped her in her tracks. I thought it was very sweet of MP to speak with her, to call attention to her friend Winnie the Pooh who had come to see the movie with her.


As we walked through the lobby, each of us received a bag of goodies--turned out to be sort of movie props for the audience's enjoyment, to heighten our sense of participation beyond mere singing. Here you see Sarah holding our cards and her umbrella. Mine's the card on the left.


Mary Poppins held each item up, one at a time, and asked the audience for suggestions when to use them during the movie. Other items included a chocolate penny for Feed the Birds; a Pixy Stix for A Spoonful of Sugar, the umbrella for Mary Poppins arrival and departure, a kazoo for when the penguins show up in the part where Mary and Bert and Michael and Jane jump into Bert's sidewalk art, a Champagne Party Popper to pull and cause to explode at one of the times that Admiral Boom's man shot off that cannon on the roof, a paper fan to blow away all of those other nannies who answered Mr. Banks' ad for a new nanny, and the pink card to hold up while everyone sang Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! You could smell the gunpowder every time that cannon went boom, what with all of us deciding to pull the string on our party popper at different times. One more thing Mary Poppins told us--the words would appear on the screen for each song which relieved my anxiety about remembering all of them.


Here's the silhouette of my "hat," caused by the light behind me inside the theater itself.


And here I am in the hall mirror at home, before heading to the show.

I can't think of what to wear when I go see Grease. I don't know where my scarves are, yet.