Imagine, a right proper Charlie

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Douglas Hodge plays Wonka

A new stage musical version of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory opened last week at The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.  The show will garner awards for production and Douglas Hodge as a charismatic Willy Wonka will be feted and adorned with well-deserved gongs.  What amazed though was not that the show is amazing.  It is right?   But more amazing is how something this good, left me feeling slightly cheated.  Scrub that, reverse that.  I will try and explain.  A multi-million dollar production with special visual effects, directed by Oscar winning, Bond-rebooting genius Sam Mendes.  Songs by the guys who did Hairspray and a lyricist who makes Billy Crystal's songs zing at the The Oscars.  It just couldn't fail.  Or could it?

My first experience of musical theatre, other than Panto and a school production of Bugsy Malone, was at The Palladium about twenty years ago, when I saw the same Sam Mendes' version of Oliver!  The leading lady's parents, sat just in front, were engulfed by the emotion of it all, weeping throughout.  Musical theatre, at its best, does that.  It can move you to tears, even, or maybe because of, the sheer unabashed joy of it all.  But last night, Charlie was a game of two halves.  A long over sincere (slightly plodding) opening hour, only revitalised before the break by a caricature "fat German eats too many sausages" song (!?) and then the arrival of Wonka.  The second half is a stunner: pacy, witty, funny and extraordinary in its visual chutzpah and an undoubted technology triumph.  The Ooompah-Lumpahs are memorable, the set-peice fight with vicious roller skating Squirrels, surreally brilliant.  Its so so fantastically inventive in a way that the Burton + Depp movie was depressingly not.  But still, why not a triumph?  

Well, a SPOILER follows, so quit here if you are seeing the show sometime.  A 2 hour 15 show should have at least one memorable tune.  Something to humm on the Tube on the way home.   And this show DOES.  It is gorgeously done and starts with a simple opening tease… "Make a wish.  Count to three."  

We are back with Gene Wilder at the top of a staircase, swiping his cane across the chests of the children desperate to run down the stairs and devour the set.  Pure Imagination.  A show this good still needed a memorable song and it found it.  Not in the world of the imagination, but from the dusty DVD on the shelf.  The audience almost collectively gasped and then fell under the spell, again.  The theatre last night was sold out.   It will be.  For years.

UPDATE.  The show website now shows a 2 minute trailer which…gives the whole game away

You will believe a script can die

I don't usually write single movie reviews on WYA, but…herewith, a collection of pithy, unstructured thoughts about the new Superman movie, Man of Steel.  If you don't want too many spoiler words, just simply skip to the next blog post, on something more important than a DC re-boot.    

In many ways, its like Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise, but without the humour.  But the guy who plays Superman (Henry Cavill) is so hot, you can't believe it takes two hours for anyone other than Lois to even notice.  Lois (Amy Adams) wears various cardigans and is so unlike Margo Kidder's Lois, that I kept expecting a calypso band to appear and start playing "How Can I Tell Her I Love Her", while furry animals clean the Daily Plant offices.  And then, and then, and then…it's got this bit in the middle, told non-linear, shot through long grass, which takes the Christ analogy from Bryan Singer's version and rolls it into a big fat smoke and ponders, literally, what it is all about?  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Why the cape?  The middle hour is a beautifully shot and paced episodic 'pause for breath' exploring the odd non-father-son relationship (with Costner, above, who is perfect).  Thankfully, this transcends the silly costume stuff (think Kenneth Branagh's Thor) and then ultimately the noisy Michael Bay style Transformer noise and visual debacle ending.  A fab 'reboot' franchise movie about becoming and then being a Superhero is unfortunately bookended by a terrible cacophony of visual effects rubbish at the end.  For Warners it will make at least a billion dollars and Henry Cavill will become as hot a star property as Hugh Jackman.

Film of the year, 1776.

There are innumerable blogs on the topic, "Best Film of 2012". Some of them are terrific - like this one, or this one, or even, this one. But few of them agree. Wonderful really that opinions can vary. That taste can be, exactly that.

My film of the year was unquestionably A Royal Affair. Period dramas as MOVIES are doomed in an age when TV owns the territory. Downton predominates our thinking, but the ambition is so pedestrian. Sure bodices are ripped, looks of longing are beautifully framed and costumers raid dusty cupboards, but script writers for TV seem to spend televisual millions explaining, explaining, explaining. Now here, complete with glorious SUBTITLES, is a fine movie of intrigue, mixed motives and true madness. Nikolaj Arcel's movie is written so well (by Rasmus Heisterberg based on a source novel of a tale apparently every Danish child would know) you may want to want to walk out and give up ever having misguidedly thought you could tell a tale even nearly so well as this. Mad King Christian VII (Mikkel Folsgaard) marries 16 year old English princess Caroline (Alicia Vikander) who falls for Johann Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen) who becomes the king's personal physician, despite being German, or something. Its cold and lots of people die of Small Pox. The film is imbued with Shakespeare, which mad King Christian loves to quote, and mixes the romantic drama of the Court with the frisson of ideas and ideals of the enlightenment, but ultimately the book burners and forces of conservatism confront such liberal claptrap with a good dose of torture and the swing of a mighty axe. A Royal Affair is filmed wonderfully, cut crisply, feels 60 minutes shorter than its 140 minutes running time and is the best advert for Danish cinema since, since, well take me on trust - its much better than Dragon Tattoo. See it. It's the best film about late eighteenth century Denmark you are likely to see, well ever.