A World of Pure Imagination: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory dazzles audiences by making the impossible come alive on stage

Hot on the heels of the success of Matilda the Musical, another classic Roald Dahl story has been adapted for the stage. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been previewing at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane throughout June and last week saw the glamorous opening night, attended by stars such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Uma Thurman and Tom Hollander.

With the Oscar award winning director Sam Mendes at the helm, this show has been eagerly anticipated for years, with The Guardian declaring as far as back as 2011 that, “(the) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical could be a golden ticket.” Thanks to the recent success of the RSC’s multi-award winning Matilda, which has now also opened on Broadway to critical and public acclaim, the pressure is well and truly on both Mendes and his creative team. They seem to have understood the magnitude of the task however with David Greig, the man tasked with adapting the book for the stage, telling Mendes at their first meeting, “I think it’s really difficult. I think it’s nearly impossible.”

“Nearly impossible” it may well have seemed when Greig was first confronted with some of the technical difficulties of turning a book of ‘pure imagination’ into a nuts and bolts West End musical. After all this is a fantastical factory staffed by diminutive Oompa Loompas, where bizarre accidents occur resulting in children being sucked inside giant pipes or blown up into a blueberry.

The techniques used to overcome these challenges are some of the most inventive I have ever seen in a West End show. The Oompa Loompas use both clever costume design and strategically placed props to create the illusion of being the “knee high” factory workers Dahl describes. Whilst this has met with disdain from the Daily Mail’s reviewer Quentin Letts, “The Oompa Loompas are played not by dwarves, alas, but disguised, full size actors. Boring.”  these characters have always been as changeable in their presentation as they are controversial. Originally described (and illustrated) as being “black Pygmies” until complaints led the publishers to realise this was “no longer acceptable,” later editions of the book have shown the Oompa Loompas possessing “rosy-white skin” and “golden brown hair.” I was therefore far from bored to see the latest vision avoiding re-visiting techniques already seen in previous film versions. Less controversially, the shrinking of Mike TV is accomplished by an animated doll and the vast scale of the factory is suggested by moving video projections. Without giving too much away, there is also a very impressive Great Glass Elevator and some old school vanishing tricks to keep the children in the audience absorbed by the magic.

This is after all fundamentally a children’s book and a children’s show, so has been designed with the necessary impressive sense of spectacle likely to engage children who are more familiar with the scale and special effects of film than any generation has been before. The first half has received criticism for being too slow and it is undoubtedly formulaic, as one by one we are introduced to the winners of the golden tickets and learn the vice which will, with an element of Greek tragedy about it, prove their downfall. However the second half benefits from the hard work of the first, as the characters are now fully established and we are able to plunge headlong into the world of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Douglas Hodge’s Wonka gives the musical an injection of real energy, as well as the darker side which lurks in all Dahl’s stories. As Hodge says, “I think, at the beginning, he’s lost his innocence. I think it might be darker than it’s been played before...”

This show has received a great deal of press attention in the build up to its opening, and whilst this may be helpful for advance ticket sales, it can be a difficult burden for a new show to carry. There is also the risk of an inevitable backlash, seen most recently with Viva Forever which closed in the same week as Charlie’s glamorous opening night. However, last week also saw Charlie extending its run to May 2014, so it seems this West End juggernaut has not been slowed down yet. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a well known tale but Mendes has managed to bring a freshness to it with the excellent Hodge as Wonka and various re-imaginings of these well-loved characters. The central theme of the power of imagination, to “create something out of nothing” is the skill which both Wonka and Charlie possess. This musical, with its criticism of TV and vapid celebrity culture, wants to involve us the audience in the process of creating. Mendes and his team have done a lot of the hard work for us, but I think the greatness of this musical is what it allows us to imagine for ourselves- after all, it has to be believed to be seen.

More show information and tickets for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory available on SeatLive.com.