Review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Musical at Birmingham Hippodrome
Grab your bag of everlasting gobstoppers, clutch your golden tickets tight and dive into a world of pure imagination with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Musical.
The hit West End and Broadway show has come to the Birmingham Hippodrome to deliver one of the most colourful, joyous and riotously funny performances you are bound to see this year.
Reigniting the love for the classic 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder, this stage show brings the wow factor, leaving you as open-mouthed as the first time you peeked inside the chocolate room.
Mixing classic songs from that film – Candy Man and Pure Imagination – with new songs from the writers of Hairspray, this show brings Roald Dahl’s classic novel – 60 years old next year – back to life.
While Timothy Chalamet and Hugh Grant are going to resurrect the characters back on the silver screen in ‘Wonka’ this Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Musical will remind you why you fell in love with the story in the first place.
There is great use of the screens as well as physical set pieces throughout, and the moments that are too difficult to produce realistically on stage - Violet Beauregarde blowing up into a giant blueberry, for one – they use the moments for comic effect that had the audience in howls of laughter.
There are several great acting performances throughout too.
Gareth Snook is a fantastic Willy Wonka, commanding the stage and bringing several laughs from the audience – particularly during the second half of the performance. Like many of the great Wonkas of stage and screen, he is able produce the full range of the character – from the dark side to the light.
Christopher Howell, Kate Milner Evans, Emily Winter and Leonie Spilsbury mix the roles of the Bucket family with the parents of the other ticket winners so well that it was a shock to realise that’s what they had done when perusing the programme.
Meanwhile, Robin Simoes Da Silva, Kazmin Borrer, Marisha Morgan and Teddy Hinde play the roles of the obnoxious children to perfection and Michael D’Cruze is as fun and witty as you could wish Grandpa Joe to be.
But special mention must go to Jessie-Lou Harvie, one of four young actors sharing the role of Charlie Bucket on tour.
Despite being surrounded by a cast much more experienced than her, she was not overawed in the slightest and delivered a superb performance as the lead.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Musical is at the Birmingham Hippodrome until November 5.
Book your tickets for the show at the Hippodrome website at birminghamhippodrome.com/whats-on