MARY POPPINS CANCELED IN NY AND LONDON

Mary Poppins

The world's most unflappable British nanny was stopped in her tracks Wednesday night on Broadway and in London.The evening performance of "Mary Poppins" at New York's New Amsterdam Theatre was canceled shortly into the second act after the mammoth Banks family house, a large imposing structure, went off track, Tom Schumacher, producer and president of Disney Theatricals, said. Schumacher came on stage to talk to the New York audience as stagehands tried to fix the set. He likened the mishap to a California house coming off its foundation as the audience giggled. "You New Yorkers love to laugh at California," he said. After a wait of approximately 30 minutes, Schumacher reappeared to say the performance had to be canceled. Coincidentally, five hours earlier, the evening performance of "Mary Poppins" at London's Prince Edward Theatre was also canceled because of a technical malfunction, Schumacher said.