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Arts & Culture


“T e truth is that this is a story about a little


boy who has no chance,” says Mendes. “All the people around him – his grandparents and his parents – know that. He doesn’t know it yet but he’s going to fi nd it out. So they create an environment, as everyone must do with a child, to stop him gaining that knowledge too soon, to preserve his innocence and preserve his naivety. In doing that, they love him, even in the face of poverty, wind, rain, lack of food and a lack of jobs. “So the story starts in one extreme – a very


poor, very cold and very unforgiving world. Into the midst of that everyday world comes this explosion of colour, which is the sweets, the sweet shop and what Wonka represents - an escape and a world of invention, imagination, colour, life and beauty.” As is often the case with Roald Dahl’s


much-loved stories, it is not all candy canes and happy endings though. “I think one of the reasons we’re all attracted to Dahl is that he’s got this dark undertone throughout all the books and all the short stories,” says Mendes. “T ere is something sinister in his world, something creepy, something a little bit threatening. “Willy Wonka was a mythic fi gure for me as


a kid. I feel like he’s been in my life ever since I can remember,” he adds. Paul J Medford, who plays Mr Beauregarde, the parent of one of the other golden ticket winners, says: “It’s a morality tale that subtly says, ‘If you do bad things - bad things happen to you’. But it’s told in this macabre world of humour, honesty and magic.” Alongside Medford, the cast will include four-time Olivier-nominee Douglas Hodge


as Willy Wonka, Nigel Planer as Grandpa Joe, Clive Carter as Mr Salt, Jasna Ivir as Mrs Gloop, Iris Roberts as Mrs Teavee and Myra Sands as Grandma Georgina. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman have also been tasked with composing new songs to accompany the script by award-winning playwright and adaptor David Greig. “So much of the art of writing a musical


is economy,” says Mendes. “You have to compress scenes into very short spaces of time without seeming to be doing that, because the best plays, like the best stories and the best fi lms, breathe in and out.


“One of the things that doing many


musicals at the Donmar Warehouse taught me over the years was to try to take away that sense that songs were stand-alone things that could be taken out of context. Obviously you can’t apply that philosophy completely to a big stage musical, because you need scale and you need to be big and dazzling and loud, but the philosophy is something you can still apply - that those two things need to be inextricably linked.” Medford adds: “I read the script and heard


the music and was sold. It has the great story that, of course, most people are familiar with, along with new and exciting music from the team behind the hit TV show Smash and choreography from the amazing Peter Darling of Billy Elliot and Matilda fame.” T e world premiere of Charlie and the


Chocolate Factory will take place on Tuesday 25th June 2013, with previews from 17th May 2013.


For more information and tickets call the Box Offi ce on 0844 858 8877 or visit www.CharlieandtheChocolateFactory.com


Pictures by Helen Maybanks 47


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