Cameron Mackintosh and Richard Eyre on Mary Poppins

It famously took Cameron Mackintosh over 25 years to bring Mary Poppins to the stage. But it was worth the wait - as Sydneysiders will discover when the musical opens here after a successful Melbourne season. "It's a piece I've wanted to do since I became a producer really," says the renowned impresario.

Mackintosh made his first bid for the stage rights in the 1970s but it wasn't until 1993 that he finally managed to woo the formidable, Queensland-born author Pamela Travers who wrote eight Mary Poppins books between 1934 and 1989.

It took a further seven years to convince Disney to allow him to use some of the Sherman brothers' famous songs from its 1964 film, but eventually a deal was done to co-produce a show that drew on both Travers' stories and the movie.

Mackintosh's first choice to direct was Richard Eyre, a former director of Britain's National Theatre. Eyre, however, didn't share Mackintosh's enthusiasm for Mary and was reluctant at first. "I'd seen the film when I was at university," says Eyre. "Mary Poppins, the movie, was an object of mockery if you were a student in the 60s, something to be laughed at.

"But I did go back and look at it. Of course, I thought it was charming and Julie Andrews spectacularly good. The only thing that puzzled me was the family. There's this brilliant idea of a flying nanny but the family just seems to be a bit ditzy, so what's she doing there?

"But Cameron said, ‘you must read the books', which I did and I went, Oh! I see! This is about unhappy children - as most fairytales are - being brought to happiness, and a dysfunctional family being brought to good health by the agency of this mysterious creature who comes from who knows where. And that to me seemed perfect material for a musical."

Eyre, who came to love Poppins, says he brought his "ignorance of it, or innocence" to the development of the show. "For everyone else in the team Mary Poppins was part of the folkore, whereas for me it wasn't so everything had to be justified - and I think that might have been a useful discipline to apply to it."

The stage version features several different characters and episodes to the film as well as eight new songs by talented UK songwriting duo composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe, who also re-worked much of the original film score. The characters of Mr and Mrs Banks have been deepened and given more convincing back stories, the children are naughtier than in the film, while Mary Poppins is quirkier.

Finding the right person to play the "practically perfect" nanny in Australia proved difficult. After a long search, the role went to relative newcomer Verity Hunt-Ballard. "She's fantastic: really, really wonderful," says Eyre. Mackintosh concurs, describing her as "very, very special."

Both are full of praise for the entire Australian cast, which includes Marina Prior, Philip Quast, Matt Lee, Judi Connelli and Debra Byrne. "Probably only in Australia," says Mackintosh, "would you get that many top artists doing this kind of show."

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