BEING MRS. BANKS

​Being Mrs. Banks...by Thomas Putnam

I think I saw the film MARY POPPINS three times when it first came out (at the Arcadia!) and I don't think I've seen it since. I did have the record of the soundtrack and heard the songs a lot in those years after it came out. I could sing all the songs. I knew all the characters. Not sure just what it was about it that captured my child's heart.

One of the characters that stood out was the mother, Mrs. Banks. Mother to two children; husband to “stiff upper lip” British banker, a proper gentleman. In the film, Mrs. Banks is part of the British suffragette movement. It was almost comical. Perhaps because of the actress who played the role, or perhaps because of the almost silly song they sang as the women marched out. Mr. Banks wasn't too pleased with the goings on of his proper wife.

The stage musical takes a different slant at the relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Banks. Mrs. Banks was an actress and gave it up when she married. She tries very hard to fulfill the then definition of a “good wife” and is eager to do what is expected. Unfortunately, and quite unsurprisingly, this does not serve anyone: her husband, her children, and especially not herself. In her first song in the first few moments of the play, she confides to her housekeeper, “Do you really think I made another blunder? What on earth am I to say to Mr. Banks?” This just after yet another nanny has been driven off by her unhappy children.

“Being Mrs. Banks should be an easy role, and yet it's one which I don't seem too good at on the whole,” she sings early on in the story. As the mysterious new nanny arrives and begins to work her magic on each of the four members of the family, Mrs. Banks begins to see her “role” and the possibilities for her family. She begins to see that the family can work as a whole and that as herself—rather than in a role—she can help to make her family healthy.

This song, “Being Mrs. Banks,” was not in the original film and at first, I sort of rebelled at anything new to that childhood memory. I'm finding, however, that the new songs are the ones I wake up singing, or humming in the shower, or finding certain phrases stuck in my ear. At a moment in Act II when Julie Martin of Liberty has center stage and heartbreakingly sings this song, the plight of this family comes into focus in a new way. It's a lovely, meaningful, hopeful song, and Julie (who is new to HG, but not to the stage) delivers it with just the right amount of pathos. I hope you can join us at Straughn this week.

---