Director tries new ‘Chocolate’ recipe
Play that borrows from “Willy Wonka,” book at Proctors for weekend
In a two-year period, Jack O’brien directed two fun musicals, “The Full Monty” and “Hairspray,” and two serious plays — one about the poet A.E. Housman, the other about the feud between writers Lillian Hellman and Mary Mccarthy.
All went to Broadway at the beginning of this century. O’brien, who at the time was still running the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, a post he held for 26 years, won one Tony Award and two Drama Desk Awards for those four productions.
Since then, O’brien has directed a trilogy of plays by Tom Stoppard and a trilogy of operas by Giacomo Puccini, works by Shakespeare and Chekhov, a musical adaptation of the conman movie “Catch Me if You Can”
and revivals of “The Sound of Music” and “Carousel,” and he completely reworked the London production of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to bring it to Broadway and now on tour in America. Next up: more heavy lifting with a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” that co-stars Annette Bening and Tracy Letts and is scheduled to open in April. O’brien turns 80 in June. “I’m like Whack-a-mole — you never know where I’ll pop up,” said O’brien, chatting on the phone last week from his home in Connecticut.
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” based on the 1964 Roald Dahl book of the same name and incorporating some songs from the 1971 movie adaptation, called “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” plays at Proctors through Sunday as part of a national tour that is already booked until May of next year.
“This is the version of the show I want everyone to see,” said O’brien, who continued to tweak “Charlie ...” for the road after it closed in early 2018 following nine months on Broadway. He said, “I’m heartsick that New York didn’t get to see this production.”
The London original ran for three and a half years after its 2013 opening. With a book by David Greig, music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman, it was directed by acclaimed stage and screen director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty” and two James Bond films, and dark revivals of “Cabaret,” “Company” and “Gypsy”).
When Mendes was unavailable to direct “Charlie ...” for Broadway, O’brien got the nod. He was eager, he said, having worked with Shaiman and Wittman on projects including “Hairspray” and “Catch Me if You Can.” But he saw abundant problems with the London original.
“It was huge — I think the only place in New York it would have fit was the Metropolitan Opera,” which has a vast stage, said O’brien. Further, he said the London production was “very Dickensian, very British,” and candymaker Willy Wonka didn’t make an appearance until the end of the first act.
Essentially granted the freedom by producers for a complete overhaul, O’brien and the creative team remade the show. Their changes included building a relationship from the beginning between Wonka, who works anonymously in a candy store, and the title boy, Charlie, who is one of a select few granted access to Wonka’s famously off-limits chocolate factory.
“When we opened in New York City, it was basically a brand-new musical,” said O’brien, complete with high-tech LED screens and stage wizardry that allow for the creation of what O’brien promises is a “miraculous second act,” during the visit to the chocolate factory. Improvements continued for the U.S. tour and the first production in Australia.
“You never finish a musical,” said O’brien. “After it opens, it keeps evolving.”
Reflecting on his life’s work as he approaches his ninth decade, O’brien said, “I’ve had this bizarre career that none of my contemporaries have done.”
He certainly didn’t plan for it to be as eclectic as it became, but, he said, he sees a theme has emerged: “I assume my responsibility is to put as close to the truth as I can convey on the stage. If the audiences believe that, whatever it is, that is the miracle of theater.”