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Going large — and festive — is something the Paramount Theatre in Aurora loves to do with its remarkable homegrown musical productions, one of the most positive developments of the last decade in Chicago theater.
But even by those standards, this year’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is an epic, family-friendly adventure, filled with wacky machinery, pneumatic tubes, video explosions, flying props and enough stuff on the stage to make the M&Ms emporium in Times Square look subtle. All that and plenty of weird Oompa Loompas to doompety doo.
Set designer Jeffrey D. Kmiec has outdone himself. The kid in the seat across the aisle from me looked like he was about to pass out with sensory overload.
There is far more here to see here than was the case on Broadway in 2017, where the show opened with an improbably minimalist setting, disappointing most everyone. There was more chocolate at the concession stand than you could see on the stage. That’s not true at the Paramount. It’s a Fox Valley eye-popper with Gobstoppers!
All that said, the issues with “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” as a musical abide. It’s a chilly show and remains so in Aurora.
Granted, Roald Dahl’s dark and complex stories from the 1960s are not easy to adapt into family musicals, especially these days, and “Charlie,” where the second act mostly contains a powerful adult taking down some obnoxious kids, is particularly hard. But “Matilda the Musical” managed to create a wonderful show from this same author’s gestalt without compromising the J.K. Rowling-like honesty and sense of the macabre that endeared this writer to successive generations of kids.
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The problems with this show include a chronic lack of focus on Charlie’s family in the second act. His mom, beautifully played by Jaye Ladymore, sings the most emotional ballad in Act 1, referencing an absent father, but then she disappears from the story and dad never comes up again. You could argue the core relationship is between Charlie and his Grandpa Joe (Gene Weygandt), but even that goes nowhere in Act 2, when the book writer David Greig (a fine playwright, but not in tune with major musicals) goes all-in on the relationship between Charlie and Willy Wonka (Stephen Schellhardt), and Grandpa is stuck offstage at the crucial climactic moments.
The problem there is that Wonka is so nasty to so many people for so much of the show that you fear for Charlie that this prize of owning a factory may not go so well for him. He needs his loving family to help.
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That’s a problem with the show’s construction and it’s an issue with the central performance in director Trent Stork’s production. In the 1971 movie, Gene Wilder as Wonka overcame this issue with his twinkling eyes, signaling to everyone that his edge was all designed to serve the needs of the impoverished child whose life he was about to change for the good.
But that never happens: Schellhardt is extremely polished, vocally and otherwise, and I don’t doubt he has thought through all his choices, but he simply has to open up to being much warmer, kinder and more vulnerable for this show to work. For the record, I’ve seen him be so many times before. It’s an issue baked into the material, and, without more of a visibly generous inner core, the result is neither satisfying nor delicious.
Stellar work from the fabulous Meena Sood (Charlie at the performance I saw), as well as the big-hearted Weygandt and the fine ensemble and supporting cast might be more than enough for you and your family, especially when combined with this level of spectacle and the wonderful Anthony Newley songs like “Pure Imagination” and “The Candyman,” both hits for the late, great Sammy Davis Jr. Here they’re combined with new songs from the famed duo of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
The songs have more heart than the book, but Schellhardt and Stork nonetheless have the difficult and still incomplete job of marrying the two. That’s the Golden Ticket.
Theater Loop
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Jan. 14
Where: Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $28-$79 at 630-896-6666 and www.paramountaurora.com