A chocolate factory is coming to town, and everyone is invited for a holiday visit.
It is not the type of factory or store people can walk into and purchase treats from, but rather an adaptation of a fictional factory filled with life-sized treats, candy-making machines and singing employees, along with a zany factory owner.
Roald Dahl’s classic tale, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” twice has been transformed from storybook pages to big-screen movies: in 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” starring Gene Wilder, and 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” starring Johnny Depp.
On Saturday and Sunday, the story comes to life yet again, this time on Everett Performing Arts Center’s stage as “Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka,” one of the Kennedy Center’s newest productions.
The Kennedy Center – that is, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. – began its “Imagination Celebration on Tour” program in 1992. “Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka” is one of the stories being presented during the Imagination Celebration’s 2006-2007 season.
The Imagination Celebration program was created to enrich children’s educational experiences through the viewing of stage productions, as well as by providing teachers with preparatory materials before the show and follow-up materials to gauge students’ impressions and the lessons learned after the show, according to the Kennedy Center’s Web site.
“Willy Wonka” audiences will follow Charlie Bucket, Veruca Salt, Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teavee, as well as Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas as they have nonstop adventures, or, perhaps, misadventures, inside the chocolate factory.
“The book is a crackling good story with a child protagonist, and has enough humor, suspense, gothic horror, with children drowning in chocolate rivers, for example, and just plain fun to appeal to any era,” said Kim Peter Kovac, the Kennedy Center’s director of theater for young audiences. “Charlie is the lovable, dorky friend all children have, or fear they actually are, and (the fact) that he wins in the end by being honest is quite wonderful.”
Kovac went on to say that the story has succeeded in its different forms because of the underlying material’s strength as well as the adaptors’ skills.
” ‘Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka,’ for example, is very much of the theater, not of literature or film,” he said.
Carol Pratt photo
Eric Thompson is Charlie Bucket in “Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka.”
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