Chitty’s back on the road — and it’s a rollicking ride
WE ALL want different things from a car, but this handsome, high-spec touring version of the film will satisfy most punters.
It’s the first time the musical has been seen on stage since it appeared in the West End in 2002. Here, again, it holds the road charmingly through the highways and by-ways of Ian Fleming’s flight of fancy, sailing through challenging technical demands.
We are in deeply familiar territory and expectations are high, so it’s a relief to say that all the big set pieces come off well.
In particular, the shiny-bonneted, leatherupholstered, red and yellow-winged, open-top motor with Union Jack inflatable floats does get airborne with the help of a well-hidden hydraulic beam.
Director James Brining is being a little optimistic in aiming to move us with Caractacus’s single parent plight, but in Jon Robyns he has a decent, wholesome Dad — even if he lacks Dick Van Dyke’s dottiness. In Amy Griffiths, Truly Scrumptious is also upgraded from the film to a feistier suffragette model, trading in lacy dress for blouse and plus-fours to appease modern taste — even if she does still struggle to find the throttle on her smoking motorbike.
Andy Hockley as Grandpa Potts inhabits his herbaceous sideburns as cheerily as his outside loo and, crucially, the children (Caitlin Surtees and Henry Kent, when I caught it this week) are an adorable duo.
The baddies, too, provide bumps in the road with Scott Paige and Sam Harrison as the bungling spies, Don Gallagher as the preening Baron (the Kim Jong-un of family entertainment), Tamsin Carroll as his hammy vamp Baroness and Stephen Matthews as a brazenly Mephistophelean child catcher.
Racy it’s not. Rather, it’s a jaunty ride through the film’s many famous songs — the earworm title tune being the least of them. Stephen Mear’s choreography does much to enhance these with a rowdy Morris Dancing tap routine for Me Ol’ Bamboo at the fairground and in The Bombie Samba for the Baron’s birthday.
Most impressive, for a touring production, is Simon Higlett’s versatile, barn-like design, with computer animations by Simon Wainwright, which have us whizzing through the Kentish countryside before soaring off Beachy Head to the Baron’s castle.
All of which makes Chitty a top-of-the-range, vintage banger.
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FOR tour details, see chittythemusical.co.uk