Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

It is Chocolate Week, 12th to 18th October 2015 and there is no better way to celebrate this ‘choc-tastic’ event than to buy a ticket to the best choc-blockbuster musical treat for years, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. David Greig’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s well-known, captivating children’s novel has been singing and dancing the boards for over two years at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It has been seen by over 1.25 million people and is still selling tickets until June 2016.

The first half is set in the dreary, poverty-stricken but loving home of the Bucket family. Charlie Bucket (Zachary Loonie) aspires to win one of the golden tickets hidden in five Wonka bars to tour the yummy and sugar-coated world of the Wonka Chocolate Factory, run by the most impressive chocolatier in the world, Willy Wonka himself. Bedridden Grandpa Joe (Barry James) uses his last pennies to buy Charlie a Wonka chocolate bar in the hope that he will win. The other four winners: greedy Augustus Gloop (Logan Cripps), gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde (Miriam Nyarko), spoilt heiress, Veruca Salt (Ellie Benge), and TV fanatic Mike Teavee (Freddie Haggerty) and their families are featured on life-size TV while out-of-work Mr Bucket (Derek Hagen) provides electricity to watch TV by a pedal power generator. Finally Charlie succeeds in clutching the final golden ticket and the promise a lifetime’s supply of sweets.

In the second half, the dashing and disturbing character of Willy Wonka, who is played and sung with rakish style and an ingratiating smile by Jonathan Slinger, takes the five child stars and their family chaperones on a technicolour tour of chocaholic dreamscapes. This includes a delicious edible garden with a chocolate waterfall, busy puppet-squirrels in a nut room, a peculiar shrink-for-TV machine, chewing gum with the taste of a whole meal and an army of hardworking dwarf Oompa Loompas, ingeniously choreographed by Peter Darling. Each child gets briskly punished according to how they behave with little concern for their welfare in this eccentric inventor’s cocoa confectionery paradise. It is only once all the other children have lost their places that Willy Wonka’s disconcerting act becomes more kindly and human as Charlie Bucket wins the real prize.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a very popular tale having been filmed twice (1971 and 2005) as a musical fantasy film. This West End stage version is still as creative and delightful as the original and the characters are believable with a star-studded cast and Zachary Loonie gives a compelling star performance as Charlie Bucket. The dazzling sets, lighting and witty special effects are absolutely phenomenal and give the show a real sense of spectacle. At the 2014 Olivier Awards, Mark Thompson was awarded Best Costume Design and Paul Pyant collected Best Lighting Design. Grammy award winners, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman breathe life into the darkly mischievous plot with songs and lyrics which are both beautifully moving and whimsical. Sam Mendes CBE, who has many accolades to his name including a Directors’ Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, has produced a bonanza musical which must be seen to be believed and is choc-full of fun for all the family.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, 18 September 2015

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