A Truly Scrumptious Show (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - The Musical)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - The Musical
Date:	17/05/06 (2881 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A flying car. 'nuff said

Disadvantages: It doesn't fly high, or for long

As a Chitty virgin, never having seen even a movie adaptation of the story, I knew precious little about the story before going to see it last night at the Palace in Manchester where the touring production is currently showing. However I knew it had a special car in it and have seen an episode of Little Britain where they mock said car's flying abilities -

"Bang Bang Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Do do do do do
A musical based on a book by James Bond creator Ian Fleming
Do do do do do
You'll believe a car can fly
Unless you're sitting in the stalls
When you can clearly see it's a mechanical arm…"

So, I was curious to see the show myself. It's been playing in Manchester for quite a few weeks but the tickets were hideously expensive - up to £40 each - so I didn't get round to booking any when they first went on sale. However waiting paid off, as last week we received a message from the theatre on our work intranet saying that due to some cancellations they could offer 'best available' seats for only £10 each, with no booking fees. Bargain! That's how, even though it was midweek, we ended up at the theatre last night.

Weird foreigners, delightful children, eccentric inventors and an incompetent pair of spies, all of whom break into song at the drop of a hat to tell of their love, their fears, their hopes and their plans. If only life were one big musical. The story starts with twins Jeremy and Jemima coming across a broken down old car, left over from the war. They're told they can have it for themselves, saving it from the scrap yard, but only at a price - 40 shillings, considerably more than they have. Their father is a genius, an inventor extraordinaire, but unfortunately his inventions rarely get past the experimental stage, and as such don't bring in mega bucks.

However, combine a chance encounter with a turkey farmer (Mr. Matthews…groan) and a chance showcasing of your dubious hair cutting machine with a chance realization that one of the inventions is much more valuable than believed and you have the chance you need to get those 40 shillings and buy the car. Trouble is brewing, however, as the Vulgarian army are themselves keen to get their hands on this magical car that can do all sorts of amazing things, and they've sent two of their team to England to steal it. After a lengthy battle in England and Vulgaria, and run-ins with some rather crazy creatures, including a toy-obsessed Barron, and an evil child catcher, the story culminates in a grand finale, with a happy-ever-after ending for some, though not all, of the characters.

The story is remarkably easy to follow, and is moved on through narrative in-between musical numbers as well as the song lyrics themselves. However, it does flit around a bit, especially in terms of the setting - one minute you're at home enjoying tea, the next you're at the beach, or a sweet factory, or a fairground, or hiding in a toy shop in a faraway country. It's a typical musical in that it has plenty of singing and dancing in it, but it also has elements of a Pantomime, especially where the child catcher is concerned - he appears and the booing is so loud you can barely hear what he has to say. The same goes for the show's well known theme tune - it cropped up a few times in the show, but each time people started clapping along so loudly that I could barely make out the words. That said, there was such a good atmosphere in the auditorium and I imagined that many of the people there weren't regular theatre goers, so it was an extra special treat for them.

Another feature of this production that reminded me of a pantomime-style show was the constant jokes, puns and double entendres that were liberally sprinkled throughout the performance.

"Truly Scrumptious… Truly, eh?" says Caractacus.
"You should meet my sisters, Madly and Deeply," she replies.
"Seriously?"
"No, that's my brother"

Boom Boom.

Then later

"Are you two going to get married?"
"Why…that would make me Truly Potts"

And another,

"But I am a Vulgarian…can I not act Vulgar and still speak English"
"But no, that would make you an American"

Lots of them were funny, lots of them were cheesy and lots of them inspired groaning, particularly among the adults in the audience, but their presence did bring a certain something to the performance. The jokes did raise my hopes, however, that they might go so far as to include references to up-to-the-minute news stories, just as Pantos often do. I expected this even more when it was time for the song 'POSH' as they'd adapted it to be about being on a ferry from Liverpool, which in my mind was just screaming for a reference to the latest disruptions there. Alas, this didn't materialize, but I soon got over it.

Though there are various children appearing in the show, including playing two of the main characters, and though there were tons in the audience, it's not an entirely family-feel-good show. When the Baroness accidentally shoots one of her henchmen, the pop the gun made when it fired made the audience jump, and some of the little ones start to quiver. At the end when another of the characters is shot, people jumped again, and the appearance of the child catcher every so often seemed to send lots of kids jumping into their parents' laps. For me the scariest bit was the freaky clowns in the fairground scene - porcelain heads, fixed, evil grins - it was all very Stephen King. It may be marketed as a family show, but it did make me wonder how many kids would be having nightmares last night.

The stage sets and backdrops used are really remarkably limited. Besides the car, the only other items the cast really interact with are a few of Caractacus Potts' inventions and an assorted ensemble who change from guards to Samba dancers to factory workers to bring the scenes to life. The Tardis-like toy shop in the second act had potential to be so much more, I thought, and I was disappointed that at one point I was able to see the cast running on stage to hide behind it before they were uncovered properly - it was only one little slip up, but it still seemed like it should have been avoided.

Let's talk about the costumes for a moment. From years of theatre going my general conclusion has been that whether a show is touring or permanently fixed in one location isn't always reflected in the style and quality of the costumes, and instead these seems to depend more on the story, the budget and the competence of the costume designer. There's a real mix of costumes in this show: the general day-to-day clothing of the children and their inventor father, the get-up of their eccentric grandfather, Vulgarian army uniforms, the clothing for the dancing sweets in the factory, the drag commandeered by Boris and Goran to turn them into 'proper English gentlemen', but they all looked excellent, even from the back of the grand tier where we were sitting. They were generally simple get-ups, perhaps with the exception of the Baroness's suspenders-and-corset affair, but were effective and colourful.

Throughout the show I kept getting a sense of Déjà Vu - not that I'd seen the show before, but that some of the ideas were certainly familiar. Boris and Goran for example, are a bit like the Chuckle Brothers - which is interesting since one of the ensemble cast confesses in the programme biography that he once wrote for, and appeared in, Chucklevision. At the Baron's birthday party, the dancing doll he is presented with is highly reminiscent of a scene in Coppélia, and the sweet factory is nothing if not an extremely similar version of Roald Dahl's Charlie meets the Nutcracker.

The casting of the touring production varies depending on when and where you see it, but the group we had were very good and convincing, and included Kevin Kennedy (Corrie's Curly Watts) as the child catcher, and Brian Conley as Caractacus Potts. The children, perhaps, were precocious verging on annoying, but no more irritating than the kids in the first Harry Potter film. They also sang rather quietly at times, though this wasn't helped by the background noise you get in a theatre full of children. There were no obvious mistakes in the show, nor any dropped props or costumes that failed to work, and there was no evidence that anyone was having trouble with lines or lyrics. My favourite characters were the two Vulgarian spies, Boris and Goran because they were bumbling idiots who were trying to 'Act English' and who went around saying 'I'm an Eeenglish gentlemen' in voices that could just as well have carried off 'But I'm a l-a-d-y'.

The songs are generally bouncy and cheerful, but there are the few ubiquitous slower ballads, such as Hushabye Mountain which I think is just about as valuable to the story as Almost Paradise is to Footloose. You can draw your own conclusions about what I mean by that. I think probably the strangest thing is that Truly Scrumptious doesn't have her own solo which, considering she's the leading lady, is quite a rare thing for a musical. Along this line I'd also note that her character changes quite a bit in the show, from a strong character who doesn't believe in needing a man to do anything, and is a competent mechanic, to her role as a daughter who says please, bats her eyelids and gets what she wants to a woman who gets understandably distressed from having two children in her care get kidnapped, and is somewhat drippily in love as well. Because it's not real life, no mention is made to this radical change, nor to how it is that someone passing through - you'd think on her way to somewhere else - suddenly has all the time to hang around and frolic along with the singing and dancing fun.

Last, but not least, the car. The helicopter from Miss Saigon has nothing on this thing. Not only does it float on water, it also flies high into the air and at various points also tilts dangerously so you wonder whether any child has ever actually fallen out of it. It's hard to call it 'magical' since the age at which I could buy into make-believe is long gone, but you honestly cannot see how it takes off or soars through the air, and there's no tell-tale mechanical intervention that anyone can see. The atmosphere in the room surged when the car left the ground, and the applause was thunderous. My only real comment is that for an item that has the title role in a show, it's actually on stage very little, and in the air for even less of this time. I was interested to learn of the origins of its name in the show (from the chi-tty chi-tty bang bang noise it has a tendency to make), and the focus on manners they weave into the story (Chitty only flies if you say 'please') was suitably discreet rather than cringe-worthy.

Friends who know the book or film versions have told me the staging changes a few things from the original, but that the generic storyline remains the same, albeit with some subtle differences (in this version Caractacus is a widow and Truly is his 'lady friend'). It's also not all that realistic - I read one review which claimed this show has more miracles than Les Mis in it, thanks not least to the way things fall neatly into place: a strange woman happens to break down in front of the children, same woman happens to be the daughter of the owner of a sweet factory, said children happen to have a father who has just invented a revolutionary sweet, it all happens to come together nicely… Similarly, lots of men are dancing, wearing matching white trousers and tops and colourful waistcoats. Running away from a newly scalped man, Caractacus pulls on an identical waistcoat and suddenly, despite his black trousers and top, he blends in seamlessly and can't be spotted by his pursuer. I remember reading an email forward once about 'Truths you learn from the stage and screen', such as how if you're walking down the street and bump into a group of people dancing, you'll automatically know the steps and be able to join in without hesitation, and that's certainly the case here, as it that other universal truth concerning the Vulgarians here: when alone, foreigners naturally prefer to speak English.

Yes, go and see it, but also be warned that because it is seen as a show for kids, you might have a disrupted time. I have never had to squeeze in for so many people to go the toilet mid scene, or for parents to take their kids out to calm them down or shut them up. At the start you could barely hear the orchestra over the rustling of sweet wrappers, or the fizz-pop you get when you open a bottle of cola. It was like being in a Saturday afternoon showing of the latest Disney film, something I would normally actively avoid. Matinees would be even worse, I imagine, but though unusual for a mid-week late night show, it didn't ruin the experience, and I still had a banging good time.


Miscellaneous notes:

The show currently runs for about 2 ½ hours, including a 20 minute interval mid-way through. It's not as long a some shows, but is long enough in my mind. The musical numbers are generally short and sweet, but plentiful meaning you're never left without a song for long. There are currently two groups of ensemble kids performing on alternate nights, and 3 pairs of lead kids who also take it in turns. Although the conductor was announced prior to the start of the show, we weren't told which kids were treading the boards that night, and you honestly couldn't tell who they were beneath the hair and make-up.

The tour is not currently doing a standard programme, but is instead offering a glossy souvenir brochure for £5 which includes a 'working model' of the car to build yourself at home. Not having indulged yet, I can't tell you whether its flying abilities are akin to a paper aeroplane's or something more spectacular.


Further details and tour dates:

http://www.chittythemusical.co.uk/frame.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitty_Chitty_Bang_B ang

Summary: An interesting show, unlike any other I've ever seen...