bedknobs and broomsticks

If you haven't had the chance to catch the extensive coverage of the Fringe Festival on our weekly counterpart's website (timeoutny.com), you should. But just to break it down for theater-savvy tots, here are our reviews of FringeJR, the kid-side of the downtown fest. Note: While some have already closed (Myles) you never know when they might open up again during the year, so we wanted you to be prepared…you know, in case they do.



Angela's Flying Bed

*** [THREE STARS] In Karl Greenberg and Dave Hall's musical, a girl named Angela (Maya Gaston, Greenberg's daughter) flies around the world on magical, talking bed, encountering strange characters along the way. City kids might be able to relate, because Angela is--like her parents and most Manhattanites--stressed out and overworked. (Imagination class? Studying for playdates?) But what kid wants to relate to this melancholy, bored and reluctant girl, who would rather sit at home in a bed than fly around the world in one? Still, if the title character disappoints, the dialogue rhymes inconsistently, and the Bed's solo song gives horrible advice to kids with problems ("Just sleep on it and take mattress in your own two hands"―expect a new generation of Valium addicts), the goofy animals that Angela meets on her adventure almost make up for these failings. Lydia Gaston and Trip Plymale are a fine comic duo, playing Angela's busy-bee parents, the llamas in pajamas and the awful pretty, pretty awful birds; and the musical's high point comes when Angela crashes into the ocean and meets a trio of selfish shellfish, singing about being "crabby." But if you and your kids want to see a show about a kid and a flying bed, you'd be better off renting the 1971 classic "Bedknobs and Broomsticks."
In this musical, an apprentice witch, three Cockney orphans, and an illusionist conman travel on a magic bed across war-torn England and beyond, encountering various inhabitants of London, football-playing cartoon animals, and Nazi invaders.

In 1940, with the young men away at war, County Dorset's only defence is the elderly British Home Guard. Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury) is a spinster taking a witchcraft correspondence course in hopes of somehow helping the war effort. To her distaste, she is assigned the care of three young siblings evacuated from the London Blitz bombings. The three, Charlie (Ian Weighill), Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan) and Paul Rawlins (Roy Snart), discover her witchcraft and Charlie blackmails her. In exchange for their silence, Miss Price casts a spell on a bedknob which Paul pulled off Miss Price's late father's brass bed. The bed now can travel anywhere that Paul wants.

Miss Price, searching for the substitutiary locomotion spell which makes inanimate objects move of their own accord, uses the flying bed to travel with the children to London in search of Professor Emelius Immediately Browne (David Tomlinson), the putative headmaster of the College of Witchcraft. He is revealed as a conman who inadvertently used spells from a book of a real magician, Astoroth. Mr. Browne takes them to "his" town house, a mansion in an abandoned part of bombed-out London, from whose nursery Paul takes a children's picture book about the Lost Isle of Naboombu.

In possession of half of Astoroth's spellbook, the group travels to Portobello Road's marketplace, where an extensive multicultural dance sequence ensues before they retrieve the other half of the book. The completed text tells the legend of the spell but does not give its text. Astoroth used his magic to imbue animals with human-like qualities and behaviours. The animals killed Astoroth, stole many of his magical spells & items, and escaped to the Isle of Naboombu, the location of which is given in the nursery book which Paul is still carrying. The Bookman (Sam Jaffe) tries to grab Paul's book, but they escape on the bed to the mystical island.


They crash land in the nearby lagoon and find a cartoon realm where fish can talk, and they can breathe under the water. Miss Price and Mr. Browne win first prize in an underwater dance contest, but a giant fishhook pulls the bed and the humans out of the water. An anthropomorphic sailor bear pulls the bed to shore. They persuade him to take them to see the king, a lion who is looking for a referee for a football game. The king wears a medallion: the Star of Astoroth, which has the words to the sought-after spell engraved upon it. Mr Brown referees the game, sustaining substantial comic damage from the animals, and steals the Star of Astoroth from around the king's neck.

The group use the bed to return home, only to discover that the Star cannot leave the cartoon world. Paul reveals that the words of the spell are also in his nursery book. Miss Price attempts the spell but is unable to control it. Mr. Browne is flustered when the children and a villager begin to treat him as a parent and a partner for Miss Price, respectively. He hurriedly leaves for the train station.

During the night, a Nazi raiding party invades Miss Price's house. She and the children are taken to the village armory/museum. Mr Browne discovers Nazis at the train station and returns to Miss Price's home. Finding it too overrun, he magically turns himself into a rabbit, evades capture, and finds his friends in the village armory. Miss Price casts the substitutiary locomotion spell on the contents of the castle. Weapons and armor from across British history come to life and rout the Germans invaders in a comic action sequence.

The Germans retreat after detonating charges in Miss Price's workshop. The explosion knocks her from the sky, where she had been directing the magical attack astride a flying broomstick. This ends the spell, and the suits and armor fall to the ground. The shed in which she keeps her notebook is also blown up - destroying her notebook and the Book of Astaroth. Since Eglantine has a rotten memory, she will no longer be able to do magic. Mr. Browne enlists in the British Army, promising to return. As he departs down the road, Charlie complains that they won't have any more fun, to which Paul replies "we still have this, don't we?", pulling out the magical glittering bedknob.

Though originally intended to be a large-scale epic holiday release, similar to the original release of Mary Poppins, after its original premiere it was decided instead to cut the film down from its near 2 and a half-hour length (while the liner notes on the soundtrack CD reissue in 2002 claims it was closer to 3 hours) to a more manageable (to movie theatres) 2 hours. Several songs were removed entirely, as was a minor subplot involving Roddy McDowall's character, and the central dance number, "Portobello Road", was cut down by more than 6 minutes. Upon rediscovering a cut song, "Step in the Right Direction," on the original soundtrack album, it was decided to attempt to reconstruct the original running length. Most of the film material was found, but some segments of "Portobello Road" had to be reconstructed from work prints with digital re-coloration to attempt to match the film quality of the main content, and the footage for "Step" was never located (as of 2007, it presumably remains lost). The new edit included several newly discovered songs, including an Angela Lansbury solo performance, "Nobody's Problems". The number had been cut before the premiere of the film. Angela only made a demo recording, singing with a solo piano as the orchestrations would be added when the picture was scored. When the song was cut the orchestrations had not yet been added therefore it was finally orchestrated and put together when it was placed back into the film.

In assembling the new edit, the soundtrack for some of the spoken tracks were unrecoverable. Therefore, Angela Lansbury and Roddy McDowall were brought back in to re-dub their parts while ADR dubs were made by other actors for those who were unavailable. Even though David Tomlinson was still alive when the film was being reconstructed, he was in ill health, and unavailable to provide ADR for Emelius Browne. Some sound-alikes were criticized for not closely matching the original actors. Elements of the underscoring were either moved or extended when it was necessary to benefit the "new" material. The extended version of the film was released on DVD in 2001 for the 30th anniversary of the film. When the film was screened for the Academy after its restoration, the crowd gave a standing ovation after the song "Nobody's Problems" was featured.

The reconstruction also marks the first time the film was presented in stereophonic sound. Though the musical score was recorded in stereo and the soundtrack album was presented that way, the film was released in mono sound.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 musical film produced by Walt Disney Productions, which combines live action and animation; it premiered on October 7, 1971. It is based upon the books The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons and Bonfires and Broomsticks, by Mary Norton.

The film has similarities to the 1964 Disney film, Mary Poppins. Both films combine live action and animation and have the same look, and both films are partly set in the streets of London. Both films share parts of the same production team and one of the principal actors