Mary Poppins drops in for afternoon tea in Santa Rosa

Mary Poppins pulled a tape measure from her bag and sized up Ava Gustafson, a 10-year-old Santa Rosa girl in a bonnet and turquoise dress.

“Sweet and occasionally sassy,” pronounced Poppins, played by Ariana LaMark, 17, a singer-actress active in local community theater productions. “The tape measure never lies.”

Gustafson, one of four generations of her family at the Mary Poppins Etiquette Tea on Sunday afternoon at the Tudor Rose English Tea Room on Fourth Street, concurred with the judgment.

So did her great-grandmother, or “great Nana,” Betty Rascoe. They were half of the Santa Rosa foursome that included Gustafson’s mother, Jessica Uchytil, and grandmother “Nonni” Becky Tedesco.

The elegant, exquisitely English two-hour tea offered dainty triangular sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, quiche and cookies, all served on tablecloths with fine china and bottomless pots of tea.

And extra helpings of etiquette.

The event paid tribute to Poppins, the irrepressible English nanny who descends from the sky with her umbrella, made famous by Julie Andrews’ Oscar-winning portrayal in the eponymous 1964 Walt Disney movie.

For Angela Grant, the English-born tea room proprietress, the event had a mildly serious purpose of instructing children in a largely unstructured California culture on proper etiquette: Back straight, napkin in your lap, no elbows on the table and lift the tea cup with pinky finger extended.

The tea room was filled with about 50 Poppins fans, all women young and older, and a lone young man.

For Rascoe, who said “I love Mary Poppins,” the entire experience was “so much fun.” But what she liked best were the Mimosa cocktails served the adults, a tasty concoction of equal parts orange juice and Champagne.

Grant had plenty of explaining to do. The pinky’s purpose during the tea-drinking process “has a lot to do with balancing the tea cup,” she said.

Grant also warned against using the sugar bowl spoon to stir one’s tea and then returning it to the sugar.

“We do not cross-contaminate,” she said.

She enlisted the young man for a demonstration of how a gentleman seats a lady at a restaurant table, gently pushing in the chair as she bends her knees.

“You want to keep the chair on her legs,” Grant said, describing a technique seldom seen these days.

But she also highlighted the beneficial effect of the European custom of extended tea times.

“Having tea reminds us to stop,” she said. “Take time out to enjoy. It relaxes and rejuvenates you.”

LaMark, wearing a black jacket, striped shirt and long gray skirt, her dark hair pulled back in a bun, said she “channels Julie Andrews” to make her Poppins accent and persona come naturally.

She led the crowd in songs from the movie, including “A Spoonful of Sugar” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

A graduate of Santa Rosa High School’s Artquest program, LaMark is entering Santa Rosa Junior College’s theater arts program in August.

The crowd also sang “Happy Birthday” to Barbara Ross of Occidental, who was brought - as a surprise - by her sister, Kathleen McKenna of Foster City.

Asked if she saw the movie, Ross, wearing a white dress and large hat with flowers, said, “When I was a little girl, of course.”

Erianna Winner, 6, and her sister Danica, 3, sat with their mother Laurabelle Winner and grandmother, Judy Bruner, all from Santa Rosa. The girls wore elegant white dresses and red bows in their blonde hair.

“I could wear this to a wedding,” Erianna said.