REUTERS.    Last month, film director Kevin Smith made national news when he was thrown off of a commercial airplane for being too fat.  Now a new incident promises to heat up the increasingly incendiary debate on how heavy people are treated in our society.

For weeks, the producers of of Mary Poppins, the smash hit Broadway musical based on the beloved children’s books and movie, have been concerned with the expanding waistline of actress Talia Wheatson, who has been playing the title role the national touring production of the show.  She had received several warnings from the producers to slim down or ship out.  Thus far, the only response from Ms. Wheatson and her agent have been a simple statement that original author P.L. Travers never specified that the magical nanny be thin.

A tragic incident at last Sunday’s matinee performance of the show at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis is sure to ratchet up the rhetoric on this issue.

The end of the musical contains one the show’s most famous special effects, when the character of Mary Poppins “flies” high over the audience through the use of wires.  Evidently the wire mechanism wasn’t built to support a 220-pound Mary Poppins, because when Wheaton was at her highest point over the audience, the wire support snapped.

The actress plummeted sixty-five feet into the horrified audience, landing on patrons sitting in the rear orchestra.  She was not seriously injured, but three children were killed when their necks were snapped by her plummeting bulk.

Cissy Spiegel, nine, Tor Mallomar, eight and Tyler Du, eleven, were attending the performance as guests of the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which helps make dreams come true for terminally ill children.  The three dead tots where all drama students. 

In an ironic twist, it turns out that all three children had just that day received diagnoses of being cancer-free, and were only able to attend the performance because they had already received their tickets from the Foundation.

The producers immediately fired Talia Wheatson, who is suing them as well as Flying by Foy, the company which makes the flying harness.  Ms. Wheatson’s former understudy, Virginia Noddle, has assumed the role of Mary Poppins.  “We couldn’t be happier about our new star, ” a statement from the production office read.  “Ms. Noddle is not only fiercely talented, but she’s a full-on anorexic/bulimic. We have the doctor’s note to prove it.”