Sets. They are a bugger. I once knew a set designer who said “If the audience are looking at the set, then the director is doing something wrong”, and it’s been a motto that I stand by to this day. I think bells and whistles are all very good, and I’ll even indulge an audience when they applaud a set as the curtain rises at the beginning of an act but, by and large, it’s all only so much icing on the cake. This show is very icing heavy, as much as it saddens me to say it.
You see, I love Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I love it. Lots and lots. I love it so much that I was willing to blind myself to the odd slip here and there in putting it on stage. So the Oompa-loompas have to be fairly static? Fine. They were always going to hard to pull off. So the chocolate waterfall isn’t real? Easily forgivable. I was very amenable, folks. This is why it’s difficult for me to say that, whilst this is an excellent attempt to put this great story on the stage, at no point inside the factory itself did I feel comfortable and confident that none of the convoluted effects was going to go wrong. It was like sitting in one of those cars that supposedly drive themselves- I was completely convinced that I was inevitably heading through the windscreen at some point.
The first act is magnificent. The actors portraying the simple and loving Bucket family are brilliantly cast, with special mention going to Charlie himself who was so bang-on that you hardly noticed just how brilliant he was (I’m sorry I didn’t get his name- I feel like a heel.) The flow of the narrative is perfect and, before the abject poverty becomes a bit repetitive, we’re met with the best part of the show for me- a giant television set containing interviews with the four winners of the golden ticket. I’ve always thought that one of the many reasons Dahl was so good was his ability to sum up a character totally in just their name (I mean, Veruca Salt?! That’s at once not a name at all, and possibly the greatest name given to a character ever!) These little vignettes do exactly the same thing- in two or three minutes, we know exactly who these kids are, and also exactly what’s wrong with them. I also liked the fact that Mike Teevee was updated to being addicted to video games- it was a nice touch.
The moment when Charlie reveals to his devoted and desperate family that he’s found the last golden ticket genuinely gave me a bit of a chill, and the number following number (‘Please don’t pinch me, Charlie’) wouldn’t have been out of place in a great Lionel Bart musical. Wonka’s introductory song at the end of the first act is a bit of a cobbled-together mishmash, but I still retained high hopes for act two.
Alas, this is where the wheels started to come off. Due to the nature of the narrative i.e. getting rid of the awful children one at a time as they make their way around the factory, a lot of the heart of the show was lost along the way. There was no time to ponder any more, there were children to dispose of, in increasingly convoluted ways. Add to this the hasty introduction of the Oompa-loompas, and the extended scenes in front of a cloth while the enormous sets were changed behind, and I could nearly see the stage manager tapping their watch furiously. Narrative would have to wait until the next show piece could be constructed. It got so desperate that, by the time the great glass elevator was revealed (incidentally a fantastic effect, although apparently a bit temperamental), it felt like the brakes had finally been slammed on and I was expected to care again. Too little, too late, though, I’m afraid. Charlie went from the heart and soul of the piece in the first act, to an afterthought in the second, to the sole heir and champion of the story, so quickly that I couldn’t really keep up. It was such a shame.
Also, not to sound like I’m jumping on the band wagon, but the music just isn’t memorable or powerful enough. The other Dahl musical on at the minute, Matilda, shows up the cracks in this score – Tim Minchin’s songs are drawn from the same tonal pool and, consequently, there’s a satisfying musical flavour to the whole piece. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s composer Marc Shaiman seems to have gone in the opposite direction and the result of this is that not of it stitches together. All of Mike Teevee’s techno-influenced songs are especially grating and, whilst there are flashes of what could have been, by-and-large there’s no musical identity that you can cling to.
Ultimately, this show would have benefitted from someone reminding the creative team that they weren’t making a movie and that a theatrical audience doesn’t need to see everything literally- sometimes things are best left up the imagination. As long as the script and the songs are suitably emotive and the direction creative enough, an audience will fill in the blanks for you. Rely on the imaginations of your audience- Road Dahl certainly did.