From yellow Wiggle to Mary Poppins: Sam Moran transforms with spoonful of sugar

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This was published 8 years ago

From yellow Wiggle to Mary Poppins: Sam Moran transforms with spoonful of sugar

The usually chipper former Wiggle finds himself playing a gruff patriarch in the children's story of a magical nanny.

By Elissa Blake

It wasn't always Sam Moran's intention to make a living singing Rockabye Your Bear. As a young performer, he had his sights set on Verdi's Nessun Dorma or E Lucevan Le Stelle from Puccini's Tosca.

It's little known outside the entertainment industry that before Moran found fame as Yellow Wiggle Greg Page's replacement, he trained as an opera singer. "When I was at the Con [Sydney's Conservatory of Music], I was considered to be a true tenor," Moran says. "Opera teachers get very excited when true tenors come on board because they don't turn up very often. But then I was always being told that I sounded too 'musical theatre'. I would hold the note straight and bring the vibrato in late, whereas opera singing is vibrato the whole time."

Happy place: Sam Moran (second from left) as George Banks, with Penny McNamee as Mary Poppins, along with their stage children from the musical theatre production.

Happy place: Sam Moran (second from left) as George Banks, with Penny McNamee as Mary Poppins, along with their stage children from the musical theatre production. Credit: Nic Walker

Moran, who spent six years in the yellow skivvy until Page controversially returned to the Wiggles in 2012, is about to put those operatic pipes to good use in a new production of the musical Mary Poppins. He plays the gruff, work-focused George Banks.

The role is something of a mould-breaker for Moran, who has built a career being larger-than-life cheerful for pre-school audiences. "I'm normally all about being joyful," Moran says. "I have a show on Nick Jr every day [Play Along with Sam] and I'm very smiley and happy, actually quite childlike. Mr Banks is something completely different for me, a man who doesn't really have any joy in his life at all."

Sam Moran, third from left, during his spell with The Wiggles.

Sam Moran, third from left, during his spell with The Wiggles.

As a dad himself, Moran, 37, says he understands why George is the way he is.

"The stresses of life get him down and we all get to that point sometimes," Moran says. "Thanks to Mary, he starts to see the world through her eyes and through his children's eyes. It's lovely to play a character who begins in a bad place but ends up really attached to his children, rather than detached."

Adapted from the classic books by P.L. Travers and the 1964 Disney film, Packemin Productions' all-new Mary Poppins also stars Shaun Rennie as the chipper chimney sweep Bert, Kate Maree Hoolihan​ as George's wife Winifred, and Penny McNamee​ as supernanny Mary.

McNamee says the Mary she portrays will be a spoonful of sugar sweeter than the one played by Verity Hunt-Ballard in the 2011 production of Mary Poppins presented at the Capitol Theatre.

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"When Cameron Macintosh acquired the rights to the musical, he had to promise P.L. Travers that he would bring Mary back to something more like she was in the book," McNamee explains. "Originally, she was fair but she was also very firm. I think people were a little taken aback by how firm she was. They were expecting something warmer, more like Julie Andrews in the film."

The Packemin production, directed by Neil Gooding, will feature an altogether nicer nanny. "We have the freedom to play the characters as we like. I won't be as sweet as Julie Andrews but I also don't want her to be quite as forbidding as she is in the book."

Sweet or sour, Mary Poppins is still one of the most demanding roles in music theatre, McNamee says. "I don't think I fully appreciated how big and complex the role is. Mary is on stage 90 per cent of the time, she has to sing a very high soprano and she has to dance and fly. You have to have your whole skill set turned on."

Mary Poppins plays from July 24 to August 8 at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, $25-$42, 8839 3399.

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