Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061165
6 6 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 stages with scenery. Supervising Art Director Niall Moroney led the team, with Art Directors Elaine Kusmishko, Amanda Dazely, Simon Elsey and Steve Carter. The Art Department was a whole talented team of artists that created over seven hundred working drawings, many by hand. Cherry Tree Lane came to life on H Stage; first in grey winter light, bare limbs peeking out over the street and bushes sadly needing blooms. The set needed to be quite somber at the start of the story. Eventually spring did come, helped along by over eight hundred thousand cherry blossoms individually applied! Wisteria bloomed and all the bushes flowered! Beautiful! The scene was an entrance to the Spring Fair…To get the cast and crew in the mood buckets with hundreds of fresh-cut roses and trays of fresh glass clippings were hidden at the stage door. Everyone smiled seeing and smelling spring for the first time! This same stage was later used for a daring Big Ben sequence and the entrance to Mary's cousin Topotrepolovsky's topsy-turvey world. Mary Poppins Returns is a musical with completely new songs and dances. Instead of setting up a department with drawing boards and printers, the first job on a musical is creating a dance hall space! On Mary Poppins Returns, J Stage at Shepperton Studios was turned into an enormous rehearsal space with a 125 x 150 foot sprung dance floor, A B C A. HAND DRAFTED ELEVATIONS OF ADMIRAL BOOM'S HOUSE ON CHERRY TREE LANE, DRAWN BY SIMON ELSLEY. B. WHITE MODEL OF THE CHERRY TREE LANE SET BY SCOT ERB. C. CHERRY TREE LANE SET IN PROGRESS. PHOTO BY JOHN MYHRE.