The Supercalifragilistic Lin-Manuel Miranda [Lin covers Vanity Fair]
The first image you see in Mary Poppins Returns is a gas flame dancing in an old-fashioned street lamp, just before dawn. Itâs an apt way to start the movie, which, more than half a century later, means to rekindle the spirit of Walt Disneyâs 1964 adaptation of the P. L. Travers childrenâs books. Some would argue (well, I would) that the original Mary Poppins is the greatest of Walt Disney picturesâDisney, the actual man and studio headâso that crafting a sequel is a Herculean and possibly foolish task. Blame or salute director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Into the Woods), screenwriter David Magee (Life of Pi), and songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray). But here we are.
The second thing you see in Mary Poppins Returns is a close-up of Lin-Manuel Miranda, tending the flame literally and figuratively as a Cockney lamplighter named Jack. Those of us happy just to have had tickets in the rear balcony when we saw Hamilton, the epochal hip-hop musical Miranda wrote and starred in on Broadway, or In the Heights, his first show and the rare Broadway hit with Latin music actually written by Latinos, may not have realized how expressive his big brown eyes are, especially on a movie screen. Here, with his face shorn of its customary beard and mustache, those eyes, no longer counterbalanced by whiskers, look almost ridiculously, Keane-ian large. Theyâve been unleashed, like a pair of excited puppiesâadorable and up for anything. In tandem with the gaslight, they seem meant to welcome us into the magical, innocent, sentimental world of Mary Poppins Returns, and they give us the first hint that this thing might work.
Rob Marshall and John DeLuca, Marshallâs producing partner as well as his partner partner, cast Miranda after seeing him in Hamilton,consciously following the template set by Walt Disney, who gave Andrews her first big-screen role in Mary Poppins after she had become a Broadway star in My Fair Lady and Camelot. âWe were blown away by the spirit behind Linâs work as an actorâthereâs an unusual purity to it,â Marshall told me. âWhatâs so fascinating about getting to know Lin personally is that thereâs not a jaded bone in his body, and we were looking for Jack to have an optimism, a child-like sensibility. Lin just has that âitâ thing, and it comes right through the lens.â
Not a jaded bone in his body. Sam Wasson, a friend of Mirandaâs from their undergraduate days at Wesleyan, said much the same thing when he described Miranda as âa human gumdrop.â At Wesleyan, Wasson and Miranda worked on shows together, including an improv group that Miranda played music for. âHe was game for anything,â Wasson said. âHe had a little Mickey-and-Judy feeling in him. âLetâs go! Letâs do it!â Itâd be impossible to think of Lin as depressed in any way, which makes me hate him. You want to think, âOh, genius comes with darkness,â and Iâm sure itâs there, but I havenât seen it.â
Mary doesnât age, right? Which makes her kind of like a Time Lord.â That was Miranda one afternoon this summer, explaining the ground rules of what I hope no one at Disney refers to as the Poppinsverse. âTime Lordâ (I had to look it up) is a reference to Doctor Who and that seriesâs race of time-bending aliens who can also regenerate themselves whenever plot twists or casting changes demand. You can imagine the novel appeal of characters who have literally all the time in the world to someone whose signature work is about a man haunted by the specter of an early death; as Mirandaâs Eliza Hamilton sings to her husband, âWhy do you write like youâre running out of time?â Itâs a refrain that underscores Mirandaâs own life and work, well beyond Hamilton.
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