Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Off Broadway Review
Review: Some Carbohydrate but Not Plenty Spice in This 'Chocolate Factory'
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Broadway, Musical
- two hrs. and 30 min.
- Endmost Date:
- Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 W 46th St.
- 877-250-2929
Don't expect a sugar rush from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the new musical that opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Sunday. This latest adaptation of Roald Dahl's winningly sinister children's story from 1964 is — thank sky — no sweeter than the 2 film adaptations it inspired, starring Gene Wilder (1971) and Johnny Depp (2005).
And then again, this big merely tentative show — which features a book by David Greig and songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman — doesn't burst with flavor of whatsoever kind, at to the lowest degree not during its exposition-crammed showtime deed. Only in its second one-half does the evidence larn a distinct gustatory modality, and information technology definitely isn't confectionary.
That no ane goes to Dahl for the blandly picturesque was made clear a few years ago by the success of the darkness-shrouded musical adaptation of his "Matilda." The appeal of this author, for both children and grown-ups, has always been his nasty streak.
After more than an hour of chipper pharynx clearing, that's the streak that finally emerges, like a stinging ripple of rum in vanilla fudge, in this retooled accommodation out of London, directed by Jack O'Brien. Information technology is also the moment when the bear witness's star, Christian Borle, at terminal comes into his ain every bit the violently eccentric Willy Wonka, who owns and runs the enchanted factory of the musical's title.
Paradigm
The Broadway "Charlie" is an improvement on its London incarnation, which I saw four years ago. That version was staged by Sam Mendes, and then basking in commercial glory equally a director of James Bail films. Every bit frantic and gadget-driven as any 007 motion-picture show, it was a mega-musical that left you feeling glazed and overstuffed.
Mr. O'Brien'southward production dials down the spectacle. It besides gives its Willy more stage time. (Douglas Hodge originated the part in London, but was absent-minded for much of the first act.)
Mr. Shaiman and Mr. Wittman (Tony winners for "Hairspray") have created an assortment of new satirical and sentimental songs, which are notwithstanding largely forgettable but now have a more topically American frame of reference. (Squint and yous'll discern jabs at the current residents of the White House.) And the prove now begins with Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's best-known number from the 1971 movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."
That's "The Candy Homo," which became a swinging popular hit for Sammy Davis Jr. Swinging is not the adjective for Mr. Borle'southward interpretation, which exudes a quiet, baffled detachment, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
Image
A similar lack of confidence pervades much of what follows, though not for desire of enthusiasm past the talented child thespian I saw in the title part, Ryan Foust, playing the penurious simply resourceful Charlie Bucket. (Mr. Foust alternates in the role with Jake Ryan Flynn and Ryan Sell.)
Immature Charlie lives mitt-to-mouth with his female parent (Emily Padgett) and his four grandparents (Kristy Cates, Madeleine Doherty, Paul Slade Smith and John Rubinstein), in a trash heap of a house that suggests Samuel Beckett beingness whimsical. (The appropriately fanciful sets and costumes are by Marker Thompson.)
The chocolate-obsessed Charlie's idol is the elusive Willy Wonka, whose candy has fallen out of mode merely whose manufacturing plant notwithstanding operates nearby. Voilà! Charlie receives the chance to visit Wonka's world, with his twinkly old Gramps Joe (Mr. Rubinstein), to debate for a mysterious prize. His contest: a deadly sins quartet of repellent young creatures, here embodied past developed performers. They include Augustus Gloop (F. Michael Haynie), a porcine Bavarian lad with a love of sausages; and Veruca Salt (Emma Pfaeffle), a Russian textile girl of royal whims.
The other contestants are Violet Beauregarde (Trista Dollison), a champion bubble-gum chewer who behaves similar a teen star from the Disney Channel; and Mike Teavee (Michael Wartella), a bratty genius for whom life exists entirely on the screens of amusement devices. (Among their very indulgent parents, Jackie Hoffman is a hoot every bit Mrs. Teavee, whom she portrays as a pill-popping June Cleaver.)
And so we see the wistful but determined Charlie — who, similar Wonka, embodies the virtues of pure imagination — showing his inventive mettle with his beloved Grandpa and with a local sweetness shop owner, who is Willy in disguise. Past contrast, each of his gilt-ticket-property competitors misbehaves in a shrill solo that speaks to how a child can go bad in a consumerist, celebrity-ruled, technology-dominated culture.
In the second act, these spoiled young things get their but deserts, through a variety of fantastically fiendish means. The idea of macabre penalisation seems to take acted as a stimulant on the artistic faculties of everyone involved, every bit the show turns increasingly surreal.
For 1 thing, we get to meet Wonka's assembly line workers, the tiny Oompa Loompas, a crayon-color brood who have been brought to strange and delightful life via Basil Twist's puppetry and Joshua Bergasse's choreography. (Mr. Bergasse also does well by Veruca'due south dance of self-destruction, a ballet with behemothic squirrels.)
Most gratifying, though, is the transformation of Mr. Borle. Upward to that point, he's been hanging effectually like a devious uncle at a kiddie political party who isn't even sure he's been invited.
Just as the Nero-like emperor of his own fantastical realm, this Willy switches into dissing diva mode, with a skip in his step and a fork in his tongue. (In this sense, Mr. Borle is closer to Mr. Wilder than to Mr. Depp, whose Willy was an affectless hybrid of Michael Jackson and Anna Wintour.) Theatergoers who admired Mr. Borle's baroque comic turns in "Peter and the Starcatcher" and "Something Rotten!" volition feel they have their gloriously demented Christian back.
Be warned, though. Past the show's end, wild Willy will have turned back into gentle Willy, swapping madcap loftier jinks for sentimental uplift. For listless theatergoers who require a existent sugar fix after the show, at that place are M&M and Hershey theme-park-style processed stores, conveniently simply ii blocks north.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/theater/charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory-review-broadway.html
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