Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is just the ticket for family fun at Marriott Theatre
To pull off a satisfying production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you need a good-hearted, yearning Charlie Bucket who has easy chemistry with Grandpa Joe and who can melt the cantankerous heart of chocolatier Willy Wonka as he holds a worldwide contest to entrust his factory to a worthy successor. The Charlie now onstage at Marriott Theatre has indeed assembled those key ingredients to whip up a sweet and salty treat for family audiences.
As Charlie, Kai Edgar is believable both as a dreamer who longs for his golden ticket and as a restless inventor of wondrous delights he plans to build if he wins title to the candy empire. After playing Charlie in a national tour of the Broadway production, Edgar inhabits the role beautifully.
Meanwhile, Rick Hall gives us an avuncular Grandpa Joe with a real soft spot for Charlie, and George Keating delivers an impish, whimsical take on Wonka that goes down as easy as a chocolate cream. Though I missed the hint of menace usually seen in the character, it made sense to let that slide given a short run time that would make selling the character transformation difficult.
This production does a lot with a little, from the psychedelic costumes of the Oompa Loompas to the very cool transformation of Violet (a dynamic Avelyn Lena Choi) into a blueberry right before our eyes. Presenting the other ticket-winning kids in news reports that an incognito Wonka shows Charlie on his phone at his pop-up candy shop keeps the pace hopping.
Though I almost wished for ten more minutes of run time to let the story breathe a little, fast-paced is a blessing where little audience members are concerned. Director Amber Mak does a good job of keeping them in their seats and then hitting the curtain call before attention spans have a chance to pop like one of Violet’s bubblegum bubbles.
