Review by Simon Jenner, February 19th 2025
How could Brighton Theatre Group top their outstanding production of Oliver! last year? Their Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? An outstanding production on every level, it boasts eight performances – six to go as I write. There’s still some seats spread across the week.
Playing at Theatre Royal Brighton till February 22nd, it’s directed by Michael Burnie, with musical direction from the pit by Dan Lacey, choreography by Jodie Michele and produced by Keith Shepherd. It takes a Brighton-based musical to stupefying levels.
Production values with rapid shifts in scenery and costumes are matched by three groups including two alternating youth ensembles (Candy on this occasion, and Chocolate: details at the bottom). Every moment is blocked with a vast support team. Burnie helms set design, with Joe Wailes’ lighting and Ben Lawrance’s video relay and sound design with sound effects by Rob Platt. Charade Theatrical’s costumes and Chris Horlock’s wigs and makeup prove dizzying. A thousand hands have clearly been guided.
Raold Dahl’s story was turned from a film into a musical in 2013 with book by perhaps the finest living Scottish playwright, David Greig, wittily pointing up the narrative. Subtly updated, its two hours forty-five storytelling never dips. With Marc Shaiman’s music, and his and Scott Wittman’s lyrics it’s remained in the repertoire, not least for its memorable opening song ‘The Candy Man’. Others like ‘It Must Be Believed To be Seen’ and ‘Strike That, Reverse It’ are by turns memorable and witty. Nothing quite comes close to that opening number though. This cast almost persuades you otherwise.
Karen Brazier and Lenny Kerr. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Lacey’s band proves as punchy and idiomatic as a West End orchestra, and the sound projection avoids any boxed-in sonority. Carl Lovejoy’s Willy Wonka, the equivocal chocolate-shape-shifter leads the ensemble in ‘The Candy Man’, and proves himself a phenomenal presence. A memorably ardent tenor, he rings out across any company he’s in. Like everyone here he’s admirably crisp in articulation, but lights up the stage and proves transfixing on it. Lovejoy’s reading of Wonka is certainly sardonic, though he manages the character’s callousness with a flick of a smile to suggest we mightn’t take it too seriously. Just as well.
Lenny Kerr is Charlie Bucket on this occasion, with Santi Carter-Oliver alternating. Kerr’s already able to fine down his expression to disappointment and pathos as much as he can enthuse and appeal. Alongside such natural acting, he sings with a crystalline voice. Like many here, one can only hope the government’s promised funding for young performers will nurture him and so many, given such a start in BTG.
Phil Nair-Brown’s Grandpa Joe is a comedic role with more transformations than a rickety chameleon as Nair-Brown blossoms from memories of Waterloo and the Battle of Hastings into a rather more youthful avatar. Like Wonka, he plays with having lived centuries. Really? You decide. Though Karen Brazier’s Mrs Bucket has less to do latterly, she impresses as an eternally anxious, watchful, warm-hearted mother. Archie Brooks from the ensemble flickers as a memory of Mr Bucket, and Grandparents Andy Tiffen, Tany Cleary and Jane Ledsom apparate as a chorus with Nair-Brown in a moveable communal bed. Nyx Thompson is horribly good as rotten cabbage (and occasional chocolate) seller, a Mrs Overall of your nightmares.
Alisa Rice and Ensemble. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Props skid on and off, sometimes major items. Occasionally characters like Violet Beauregarde are ravelled up inside one, as in her transformation into – find out. Video projections from Chagall-like rainbow worlds to deepest bowels of the factory, with “Danger” projections flickering, are managed with dazzling rapidity. It’s one element setting the bar higher even than last year. Costumes too are detailed down to sausage skipping ropes in the Gloop sequences, a corps de ballet in the Veruka scenes, and giant Squirrel costumes out of Beatrix Potter films for Veruka’s undiscovered nut allergy (it’s actually giant squirrels she’s really allergic to). There’s winning puppetry in sequences with purple people, working with lighting and Michele’s unfailingly inventive choreography.
There’s more projections when the identities of the Golden Ticket holders are revealed, with national backdrops. Hideously glib Cherry Sundae (Sarah Booker) and smarmy sidekick Jerry (Rob Stevens on seedy second-city TV form) point up the World Charlie wishes at some level to escape (as with every Dahl child). It’s just he’d do it with chocolate.
Marcus Trueman impresses as Wonka’s one identifiable worker, Herman, with twinkling mischief.
Lucia Romero Clark’s Mrs Gloop personifies Dahl’s parody of Bavarian density, just as greedy (but otherwise quite benign) Augustus Gloop (Hadlee Snow on this occasion alternating with Soli Hougham) parodies an affably greedy child – surely not as deserving of punishment as the others jsut for being Bavarian. Snow’s excellent, pointing up Gloop’s stodgy snatches at a future that slips out of their grasp. As it does for overweening Mr Beauregarde (Philip Lloyd Davies, permanently livid with entitlement, but scared of his daughter) and the Obnoxious Princess Syndrome Violet herself, in preppy gear. Isla Miles here (alternating with Iris Brooks-Taylor) strikes a vocal balance between stridency and purring.
Isla Miles and Ensemble. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Nathan Charman’s pompous Russian Mr Salt is also cowed by daughter Veruca and Alisa Rice’s explosive demand for squirrels has to be heard (you’ll hear Amelie Whiteley if you come on Thursday or Saturday). Rice is winningly horrible. As are the final duo, Helen Snow’s mother-smother of a performance as Mrs Teavee, who reveals a hidden desire to keep her son forever. Mike is a monstrous brat in Elijah Pena’s paean for blood (George Saunders alternates). He relishes the fates of others so you wonder if his fate is more lenient, or more terrifying.
From pure vocals to pure entertainment, the vast array of cast and creatives, chaperones and alternates means Brighton Theatre Group is a chocolate factory all on its own. Nothing in Wonka is as magical as the vision, reach and grasp of this company. It’s perhaps their finest production yet. But then there’s Les Miserables in August. And it’s booking…
Hadlee Snow and Ensemble. Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Photo Credit: Miles Davies
Ensemble
Archie Brooks, Luke Carruthers, Lottie Devriendt, Grace Edlin-Wright, Rosa Farrington, Erin Falconer, Max Ford-Gunningham, Grace Garland, amber Horne, Isaac Howard, Ion Jenkins, Evelyn Kent, James Kiley, Holly Klassen, Denise Popple, Lily Reynolds, Grace Riach, Nyx Thompson, Mitzi Tullett, Jenny White, Josh White, Phoebe White, Emily Wright
Youth Ensemble
Team Candy (Wednesday/ Friday): Bethany Clarke, Flo Edwards, Florence Glover, Lucy Gretzer, Kenza Madjoudi, Chloe Pritchard, Lily Harris-Smith, Scarlett Hiles
Team Chocolate (Thursday/Saturday): Isabelle Corke, Scarlet Hiles, Jess Kiley, Amelie-Eve Idle, Darcey Lamooureux, Celementine Pannu, Ruby Robinson, Summer Tregidga
Team Candy Babes (Wednesday/ Friday): Mila Burroughes, Darcey Rushton, Bonnie Walker, Cassidy Walker, Stevie Wickens
Team Chocolate Babes (Thursday/Saturday): Sylvia Bennett Spencer Coe, Maisie Fuller, Phoenix Pannu, Luisa Turner
Photo Credit: Miles Davies
