Posted: 3/30/17 at 12:10am
I am in a complete stupor.
It's stunning how terrible and wrongheaded this entire production is. Could this be the worst show to hit Broadway since The Anarchist?
What makes the failure of Charlie so spectacular is that this property should have been a slam dunk as a musical stage show.
For some reason they have quasi set the show in present day. Violet is concerned with how many people are following her YouTube channel (barf) and Mike sings about hashtags (barf) and complains about the bad cell reception in the factory that is keeping him from tweeting (double barf). Yet at other times things are set in an earlier time period. Chocolate bars are still a dollar, Brussels sprouts are like 5 cents and Grandpa Joe has been amassing a life savings of 79 cents. The juxtaposition of Dahl's elements and those of the modern world is disconcerting.
Most of the new songs are downright atrocious. Each one of the children's ticket-finding introduction songs was more painful than the previous one. I actively wanted to harm Violet, Veruca and Mike. They were so annoying and completely devoid of humor. It gave me a headache. I poured myself a drink as soon as I got home to calm my nerves. It's not helping.
The set, as has been detailed in this thread, is such a wild disappointment. How can the factory be a room with four, blank blue walls? It's a disgrace. I thought we would see candy everywhere. I kept imagining would someone like Julie Taymor would have done with this material. This was so fricking cheap that it was an insult to the viewer. I heard people around me at intermission saying how disappointed they were with the sets and costumes. (During Violet and Mike's introduction numbers the ensemble dancers are decked out in garish neon orange and lime green costumes. My eyes are still aching.)
Why does it take so goddamn long for Charlie to find his ticket and to get everyone into the factory? Isn't that what we're all here to see? Waiting till act two to enter the factory is huge mistake. Reminds me of Sister Act's poor decision to wait so long for the nuns to start singing. No one wants to watch Charlie's mom sing a ballad and dance around with dead dad.
I've greatly enjoyed many of Christian Borle's performances in the past, but I don't think this is his best work. He's trying to wring a whole lot of something out of nothing, but the whole thing is such a lost cause.
The only thing that perked up the audience was the Oompa Loompas- but it's the same thing we saw in Shrek a few years ago.
The true nadir was "Veruca's Nutcracker Suite," a shocking camp moment where Veruca dances around with humans in squirrel costumes before being torn limb from limb. One of my friends noted after the show, "Did Tchaikovsky not suffer enough during his lifetime? Did he really deserve to be put through this as well?"
Did any of us deserve to be put through this show tonight, either?
