60 Things To Do In 2015: Watch Charlie and the chocolate factory the musical

I was super excited to see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory at the West End. I mean, both the original movie and the modern version were so creative so the musical would have to be just as creative, if not more!

Sj and I went during our trip to London at the beginning of May and it was fantastic! Although, a massive group of young school children were at the same showing and unfortunately, were sat next to us. The two most annoying things about this, for me, was that the child sat next to me would not sit still at all and after the interval when Willy Wonka was orchestrating, the entire row of children infront of us all stood up to see, but blocked our view in doing so!

The whole show was 2 hours 30 minutes in length with a 20 minute interval. We went to the 2:30pm showing on the first Wednesday of this month which could be seen as a mistake with all the young children that were there, although the they were actually a lot quieter than I thought they'd be - it was the people in the row behind that were the problem for talking. Why would you spend all that money on a show, only to spend the duration talking and annoying those around you?!

On the other hand, I was, and still am, amazed at how well the kid who played Charlie Bucket performed - he was on stage for the majority of the performance and remembered his lines and all of the choreography so well! It's such a shame that the performance we saw was his last time ever performing as Charlie Bucket! I can tell he will do so well in the future with his career in the West End! At the end of the performance, the guy who played Grampa Joe presented Ewan (The kid who played Charlie that was leaving) with a poster of some sort. I couldn't quiet make out what was on the poster. Ewan was crying and Grampa Joe was trying to hold it together - it really was lovely!

In my opinion, the Umpa Lumpas were brilliant! Those who played them had to shuffle around on their knees. The costumes that they wore had been crafted so well - the lights had been dimmed so that you could properly see the puffy white suits that were lined with lights for extra effects. 

You know in the movie, they have that room where everything in it is edible? Yeah, that scene in the musical had been recreated so well! It was so bright and colourful! They even had that suction thing that sucked Agustas Gloop out of the chocolate river - I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to drag him through the pipe without popping his fat suit during the performance!

The best part for me (other than Ewan receiving his leaving gift) was when Charlie and Willy Wonka were in the glass elevator and actually went up in the air and over the audience! I'm actually really disappointed that we couldn't take photos during the performance - it would have been great to have been able to show you how creative the whole performance was! 

I think musicals are definitely better when you go in the evening as the atmosphere is better, although Charlie and The Chocolate Factory was absolutely brilliant! 

Charlotte.

Ps, apologies for the terrible quality of the photos - the lighting was terrible in the theathre!