The Times is up. Not sure how to characterize it -- positive, but also a bit snide and dismissive?:
"AND who says Broadway has lost the human touch?
The title character - and undisputed star - of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," the lavish wind-up music box of a show that opened last night at the Hilton Theater, is an automobile that swims, flies and rescues people in distress if they remember to say please. Chitty routinely receives more enthusiastic applause than any of the other cast members; she is allowed the final bow in the curtain calls; and the audience claps along in tribute whenever her theme song is played, starting with the overture. The darn thing probably has a dressing room that would make Nathan Lane choke with envy.
There are also some real and very talented people in the cast, including Raúl Esparza, Philip Bosco and Jan Maxwell. (Ms. Maxwell is the sole reason for grown-ups to attend this show without children.) Of course, you cannot always understand what they are saying or singing. But words muffled by miking and plummy British accents don't much seem to matter to the alternately fidgety and absorbed audience, which surely has the youngest median age of any show on Broadway. This is, after all, a work that makes "The Lion King" look as lurid as "Mondo Cane."
No, it's the playthings that are the thing in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," which is directed by Adrian Noble and (far more important) designed by Anthony Ward: windmills and Rube Goldberg machines and a levitating miniature plane, blimp and (for that irresistible dash of bathroom humor) outhouse.
This makes the experience of attending this production, which has been a huge hit in London and is based on the rather cheesy movie musical of the same title from 1968, like hanging out for two and a half hours at the Times Square branch of Toys "R" Us, a convenient two blocks from the theater. Since orchestra seats for "Chitty" cost a C note, doing show and store in the same day is not recommended except for the rich and reckless."
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"The performers, especially Mr. Esparza, sometimes try to create the impression of real and spontaneous feelings, a noble but doomed attempt. There is some mechanically efficient dancing (choreographed by Gillian Lynne, of "Cats" fame), though the audience probably prefers the battalion of real live dogs that dash across the stage in the first act. And, yes, the car really flies, though not with the greatest of ease, and you fear for the safety of its occupants.
Cranky grown-ups will be most diverted by the performances of Marc Kudisch and especially Ms. Maxwell, who play the child-loathing Baron and Baroness of the empire of Vulgaria and who have been given some appealingly ripe dialogue. Ms. Maxwell - who sports Victoria's Secret-style costumes, sticky-bun hair coils and the most inventive comic timing in town - does the best variation on Marlene Dietrich's Teutonic world-weariness since Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles."
The real star, of course, aside from the car, is Mr. Ward, who has created sets and costumes that look as expensive as they no doubt are, a rarity among Broadway musicals at the moment. Although all those machines devised by Caractacus don't really do anything, they at least look like fun. The Potts's windmill of a home is a place most children would surely love to inhabit.
And for numbers set in a candy factory and in the blighted land of Vulgaria, Mr. Ward has devised some breathtakingly monumental scenic effects. Their imagery naggingly recalls the cold, futurist milieus of movies like "Modern Times" and "Metropolis," in which machines rule the universe. As "Chitty" so cheerfully testifies, that future has arrived."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/theater/reviews/29chit.html?8dpc
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 4/28/05 at 10:22 PM
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