Charlie and the Chocolate Factory review
WARNING: THIS POST IS A BIT OF A SLOG. IT CLOCKS IN AT OVER
7000 WORDS IN TOTAL SO IF YOU JUST WANT MY REVIEW OF Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory: The Musical, I RECOMMEND YOU STOP BEFORE THE WONKA’S
PLAN HEADING. IF YOU JUST WANT TO READ MY CONSPIRACY THEORY, SKIP TO THE WONKA’S
PLAN HEADING.
Here's a fun conversation that never happened, based (very)
loosely on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Musical. We join the
action just as Wonka opens his factory, at the start of the number It Must be Believed to be Seen:
Wonka: Beyond this door is porridge, begat from just an
oat…
Grandpa Joe: Wait, what?
W: Porridge. Behind this door.
J: Are you sure? This is the Golden Ticket competition?
W: Yes. Why, what were you expecting?
J: Chocolate!
W: Oh, you’re the entourage for the chocolate factory
tour?
Joe/Charlie/Veruca/Violet/Augustus/Mike/Parents/Reporters/Citizens:
Yes!
W: Ah, no, that’s two doors down. You want my brother Willy.
I’m Derek Wonka. I thought there were a lot of people here.
J: So, you both organised a Golden Ticket-based factory
tour, on the same day, two doors away? That’s just poor planning. Who do
you think you are, Oppenheimer?
Impressive. A paper-thin premise, a long tangential
sketch, and a semi-topical pop culture reference, without making me
laugh once. – Ed.
It was funnier in my head – Phil
Was it though? – Ed.
It’s amazing how much less funny things are written down. Sometimes
I’m so unfunny I scare myself.
In case it wasn’t clear, I recently saw Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory: The Musical (UK Tour). Unfortunately, I saw it
based on my experience of the West End show, which is vastly superior, probably
due to the higher budget.
However, I don’t want to be mean, so although I’ll be making
some comparisons, I’ll mainly be focussing on the story in this post, so BEWARE
OF SPOILERS FOR THE 1964 BOOK, THE 1971 MOVIE, THE 2005 MOVIE AND THE 2013
STAGE SHOW.
I always thought that CatCF would never be able to
tour, having seen this documentary about making
the musical, in which they said that the theatre roof had to be reinforced in
order to hold the over 10 tonnes of scenery because they were worried the roof
might collapse (there’s a scene when a piece of scenery is lowered which
contains all 15 Oompa Loompa actors; I wouldn’t feel safe enough to try it).
Theatres that rely on touring productions wouldn’t want to
close for the amount of time necessary to reinforce the building for the sake
of a single play, which is why the touring version was vastly scaled-down and
relies primarily on-screen projections rather than dramatic set pieces. That’s more
than enough negatives for now though; let’s focus on some positives:
Firstly, the cast was incredible, especially the girl playing Charlie (yes, girl). I found the gender change confusing at first, but thinking
about it, it doesn’t really affect the story.
I also noticed that Mrs Bucket and everyone around her spoke
in BSL as well as spoken English, so I wondered if that actor was deaf or HoH
(I researched it, and apparently, she is).
However, I have since learned that she doubles as Mrs Teavee, who doesn’t use
BSL, so I’m not sure why that is.
I’ve seen a version of A Christmas Carol where one man played Bob Cratchit and Mrs Fezziwig, speaking BSL (not spoken English, which was interpreted by other characters) as both characters, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t have happened in this case. No, I don’t know why he doubled as Mrs Fezziwig instead of her husband, as is the case in most adaptations.
They also had a boy from the audience playing Tiny Tim,
which you would think would be enough information to track down which version
it was, but I haven’t been able to find it. Let me know if you do.
However, I thought that Mike Teavee looked quite old for a
teenager, so I researched it and apparently, with the exception of the actor
playing Charlie, all the kids are played by adults, which was true in Broadway
but not the West End version.
This makes sense from a production point of view because casting
real children can be hard in acting, due to legally mandated shorter working
hours and having to use a different cast in every production (the exact nature
of these laws change depending on the country, but generally, in a professional
production, a child character with a starring role needs at least two covers).
Even in Amdram, when I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang recently,
there were two Jeremys and two Jemimas (known as Team Fleming and Team Dahl.
Those who know, know) used on alternate performances.
With touring productions, the adult cast is often kept the
same, while a new child cast is cast for each tour location. Apparently, this was not the case in this instance.
This is further complicated by the fact that a standby for
every actor is needed in case the main actor is taken ill suddenly or is for
some other reason unable to perform. In CatCF’s case, this would mean having
ten child actors ready to step up every night (five actual and five covers). Each
group would rehearse as a team of five, so swapping out one of them could throw
everyone off.
In case you’re wondering, adult understudies usually cover
multiple parts, so fewer covers are needed. This can get very interesting if more
than one actor is unavailable/indisposed. See Henry
Shields’ story of The Comedy About a Bank Robbery.
The touring version only has one ‘real’ child character, so
there are four actors in the part, two boys and two girls.
When The Sound of Music Live was broadcast on ITV in 2015,
there was only ever going to be one performance, but they still had to rehearse
two groups of seven children. One day I’ll write my planned post about The
Sound of Music, but that day is not today. Warning: If you like the
musical/movie, you won’t like my post about it.
Another weird tangent? I thought you were going to talk
about the story? – Ed.
Fine. – Phil
So, like most adaptations of the story, the play is divided
into two halves (not necessarily equal in length) – The Build-up and Inside the
Factory. As nothing ‘fantasmagorical’ happens outside the factory, one would
not expect Act I to be particularly spectacular, but I remember in the West End
being particularly impressed when Charlie folds a letter into a paper plane,
throws it, and it flies in a completely controlled way all the way to the back
of the circle (it looked a lot more impressive than my description).
I appreciate that that probably involves some apparatus only
present at The Theatre Royal (if it was just a wire, the plane would just flop
unceremoniously to the centre of the auditorium, then be awkwardly winched
upwards, so some sort of track was probably involved), which would explain why
the tour version has Charlie just fold the letter up and put it in their bag.
Apart from that, I don’t remember anything spectacular from
the first half. One major difference is that Charlie’s Dad (present in the book,
the 2005 movie, and the West End version) is completely absent from this version.
The versions that remove the father (the 1971 movie and the Broadway musical)
supposedly do so to make Wonka the father figure in the story, but Wonka would
make a terrible father, for reasons I’ll go into in a bit.
Story-wise, the plot of Act I is as follows:
1.
We meet Charlie and the Bucket family.
2.
It is announced on the news that Wonka is
running a Golden Ticket competition for five children to enter his factory.
3.
We meet each of the first four Ticket winners in
order (Augustus Gloop, Veruca* Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teavee).
4.
Charlie gets their annual birthday present (one
of those words was redundant, but I’m not sure which) of a Wonka chocolate bar
and it contains no golden ticket**
5.
A Russian*** is reported to have found the fifth
ticket, but this turns out to be a hoax****
6.
While walking, Charlie finds some money, which
he uses to purchase two Wonka bars, the second of which contains the Golden
Ticket.
7.
The competition winners and media gather outside
the factory, Willy Wonka comes out, sings, and invites the winners in.
There are other bits, but those are the main plot points.
*It’s only one R as a name; two Rs for the wart.
**I can’t remember when, but I think Charlie’s birthday
actually takes place in between some of the other ticket finds.
***Nationality changes depending on which version is
referenced
****This was so insignificant in the show I can’t even
definitely remember them including it.
The West End version (sorry to keep comparing the two, but on
this particular matter I don’t really even have an opinion) includes a homeless
man throughout the first half, who turns out to be Wonka in disguise, but in
the UK tour, Wonka doesn’t appear until the final scene of Act I.
Wonka’s introduction is probably the most spectacular part
of the UK tour version’s Act I. The door to the factory opens and Wonka’s cane
and hat are floating in mid-air. He steps out from behind them, picks them up, and continues singing It Must be Believed to be Seen. This is quite
impressive but is also one of the most confusing changes to the show.
The West End version involves him stepping into the doorway
dressed as an old man, then his old man clothing suddenly disappearing,
revealing him in his familiar purple suit. The Broadway version is similar,
except that as an old man, he steps out of the factory, falling over. The crowd
surrounds him briefly, then he gets up in his familiar outfit.
Either of these could be easily included in the UK Tour (only
a tearaway costume would be needed), so I can’t think what prompted the change.
In case you’re wondering, my personal favourite is the Broadway version (only seen through YouTube; I never saw that version in
person).
Act II is set almost entirely within the factory, so I was
expecting more spectacle, but it pretty much just alternates between two sets (disguised
as lots of places by the use of projections), with set pieces used to
differentiate the rooms such as the pipe in the Chocolate Room or the gum
machine in the Inventing Room.
Act II is also the act which contains the Oompa Loompas, one
of my main reasons for wanting to see the show again. This is one of the most
variable aspects in the three versions.
The West End version used a variety of different costumes
and puppets, including some costumes designed to look like one Oompa Loompa
standing atop another. The exact costume used depended on the room they were
in, for example in the nut room they were in Bernie Clifton-style squirrel
suits.
In the Broadway version, the Oompas are like Lord Farquaad in Shrek the Musical, in that they are puppets with actors crawling around on their knees:
Interestingly, although in all other versions (including the
as-yet-unreleased Wonka movie), Fickelgruber, Prodnose, and Slugworth are other
chocolatiers who send their spies in to steal Wonka’s recipes (except Fake
Slugworth from the 1971 movie), in the musical they are all former Wonka
employees who stole his ideas and started their own companies. All of this is told
as exposition and happens before the musical taking place.
I think it’s a strange thing to change, but in this case, I don’t
disapprove as I actually think it makes just as much sense as them sending in spies.
On the other hand, I can’t get on board with this version of
the Oompas. Yes, it makes sense story-wise, but that’s not how the story goes. Space
Jam would make far more sense if Bugs Bunny did literally anything
other than challenge the Monstars to a sport he himself knows nothing about, but
that’s how the movie goes (no, I’m not salty about the plot of a movie that
came out 30 years ago, why do you ask?).
I thought about comparing these versions to the book version,
but that comes with its own set of issues. You might know that the original
book described them as African pygmies, leading many to draw slavery
comparisons. Roald Dahl eventually released a revised version of the book, but
what you might not realise is that the revised edition was not released until two
years after the 1971 movie. This is why they look so odd in that movie,
having no appropriate description to reference.
Although the 1973 update describes the Oompas as:
Knee-high people who work in Mr. Wonka's factory.
No subsequent adaptation has used that description as a
basis for their appearance. Most versions have given them a more industrial ‘uniform’
look (The 2005 movie takes uniform to the next level with one actor playing all
the Oompas). The new Wonka movie has even gone before that, reusing the
style from the 1971 movie (although they have shrunk the height to be the
correct scale).
I think I would mind the stage show versions less if their
existence were explained better. Example dialogue:
Wonka: These are my Oompa Loompas. I use robots in my
factory so that they can’t steal my ideas.
Actual dialogue:
[Augustus falls into the Chocolate River]
Wonka: Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce… My Oompa
Loompas!
[the Oompas sing about Augustus]
This is a useful segue to talk about each of the violent
deaths in this beloved children’s story.
Death Number 1 – Augustus Gloop
Firstly, let’s briefly address the recent controversy surrounding
Augustus. Books have recently undergone more revisions to remove references
to Augustus’ being called fat. Updated copies have changed the word used
to enormous, a word which I’m sure will cause far less controversy.
In all existing adaptations that I’m aware of, Augustus’
fate lies in the Chocolate Room.
Augustus gets excited and starts eating chocolate directly from the river, the one thing Wonka asked him not to eat. He falls into the lake and a pipe sucks him up, taking him to get turned into delicious strawberry-flavored chocolate-coated fudge (“Augustus-flavoured chocolate-coated Gloop? I wouldn’t allow it. The taste would be terrible.”)
In my opinion, this is the death that the stage show manages best. Because it only uses projections, the Chocolate Room itself is a little underwhelming, but once Augustus falls into the river, a pipe comes down from the roof, surrounding him. When it lifts up, he has gone, a simple enough illusion which hopefully you can figure out for yourself when I say that immediately after the pipe fully descends, there is a hazard warning and nearly all the lights go off.
One difference is that in all other versions, the pipe is just doing a standard activity of collecting chocolate for fudge-making, but in this show, the pipe comes down because it has detected an impurity in the river, which actually makes more sense IMO.
What this version does that no other version does though is to show what happens to Augustus after he goes up the pipe. Once the main pipe has been raised again, the Oompas bring on another pipe with a screen on it, showing Augustus being >tries to think of a less violent word than liquidised<.
All previous adaptations at least imply that Augustus was
removed from the chocolate before being turned into fudge, but only the 2005
movie explicitly states it, showing him covered in chocolate while leaving the
factory. The stage show is as far as I know the only adaptation to explicitly
kill him.
Death Number 2 – Violet Beauregarde
This is the scene which is used most in promotional material
for the show, see this clip from Comic Relief 2014:
The touring version didn’t even keep the same song, and I have no idea why. They replace it with a song called You Got What You Want, which has an almost identical tune and reuses a lot of the same lyrics, so I don’t see the point of changing it, even if you completely change the Oompa-Loompas dance.
In the clip above, Violet starts inflating (I have no idea
how that effect works), then goes offstage to later be shown as a giant
blueberry. In the book and the two movies, Violet’s transformation starts with
her nose turning blue (“Violet, you’re turning violet, Violet!”).
Roses are red,
That much is true,
But violets are purple,
Not flipping blue!
It would be possible to get that to work onstage (it’s a simple enough effect that can be achieved by pointing a light at her nose) but getting her to stand in the perfect spot at every performance would be extremely difficult, so it’s easier to just say it and not show it to the audience.
In this version, they don’t use the same method, but she does wear a blue costume that starts expanding. I suspect in this case it’s some sort of balloon that fills with air when she runs around. She then runs offstage, and Mrs. Beauregarde (the West End and Broadway versions include her father, but the UK Tour uses the mother) brings on a huge balloon with arms and legs, which she takes offstage again where she explodes (“She didn’t explode; her bubble burst”).
She doesn’t explode in either movie or the book, only in the stage show, so this is another violence amplification (She explodes in every version of the stage show; that’s not unique to the UK tour)
One thing that the show does differently (I can’t remember if this was the case in the West End version) is that Wonka says that the danger only occurs with blueberry pie – all other pies are safe – and it’s pure luck which version comes in the 3-course meal gum. In all previous versions, the gum has set flavours – Tomato (or tomato) soup; Roast beef and baked potato (or potato), and Blueberry pie.
Death? Number 3 – Veruca Salt
In the book and 2005 movie (the 1971 movie got Veruca’s demise
completely wrong, but I’m willing to let that slide because using squirrels wouldn’t
have been possible with the technology available at the time), Veruca’s demise
seems the most potentially fatal as she is sent down the garbage pipe:
“Where does that pipe go?”
“To the incinerator. But don’t worry, they only light it
on Tuesdays.”
“Today is Tuesday!
“Oh well, there’s always a
chance they decided not to light it today.”
As it turns out, Veruca was lucky
because the incinerator was broken.
The nut room was in my opinion the
least impressive of both the West End and UK tours. I didn’t like the West End
version because it was book-inaccurate. Yes, controlling squirrels to do the
correct thing in a show eight shows a week would be nigh on impossible (just look at the trouble Tim Burton had to go through to do
it once), hence why robot squirrels were used. Fair enough, I have
no problem with that. The book explicitly states that 100 squirrels are
involved, and robot squirrels are expensive, so only about a dozen are used.
Fair enough, I have no problem with that either. All the squirrels are supposed
to run at Veruca and pin her to the floor, but only enough robotic technology
is available to have them stand still and sort nuts. Again, fair enough. I
doubt a dozen squirrels would have been able to hold her anyway.
You may have noticed that I started by complaining about not being true to the book, and then justifying the reasons for this. That’s because my problem isn’t with the technical limitations; it has to do with the enhancements that were made. Each squirrel was above a green LED which would turn red and screech BAD NUT if it got a bad nut. Technologically it’s very impressive, but it falls down for accuracy.
In the tour version, all the robots
are gone. So where did they go?
Instead, there is a much bigger
cage containing someone in a squirrel costume, using the same BAD NUT LED
technology. In this version, Veruca creeps into the cage where the squirrel proclaims
her a BAD NUT and sends her down a chute to a laundry basket. The basket is
probably used because for a touring production, the location and in some cases
existence of trapdoors might be inconvenient.
“So, the good news is, this is a
very successful musical and will likely bring in a lot of punters, but the bad
news is, we are gonna need ta dig up your stage. Just hold still and
I’ll bring my spades in. Don’t worry, we’ll fill it in before we leave.”
Death/Semi-permanent Disfiguration Number 4 – Mike Teavee
Something which always confused me about Mike (even as a
child myself if I remember correctly) is his last name. I’m not sure if Gloop
is a real surname, but it certainly sounds like it could be one. On the other
hand, Salt and Beauregarde are relatively common names, and Bucket, though
uncommon, is not unheard of (“It’s pronounced Bouquet!”).
However, Teavee, in addition to (I’m pretty sure) not being a real name, is very on the nose for his character. Now I’m all for pun names; I’m currently working on a murder mystery myself featuring a music teacher called Clair de Lune, but I think you should at least put some work into them (see also my mystery’s detective Jack Hughes).
Also, if you’re going to give them on-the-nose names, be consistent. For example, Augustus Gloop becomes Augustus Chomp, Veruca Salt becomes Veruca Wantsmore and Violet Beauregarde becomes Violet Chewster). I didn’t change the first names because:
a)
I’m too lazy.
b)
Sometimes they’re important (see: “Violet,
you’re turning violet, Violet!”)
Mike’s fate in the TV room could be impressive to someone
who knows a lot less about magic tricks than I do, so I’ll briefly explain what
happens before ruining the secret:
The Oompa-Loompas put a large bar of chocolate inside an upright box vaguely resembling a wardrobe designed to look like a rocket. I explained that terribly, but I can't find a pic.
The doors of the box are closed; there is a loud bang;
someone opens the box door to show the chocolate has gone, cue Oohs from the
assembled crowd.
The chocolate appears (regular size) on a TV screen. Someone
reaches in and grabs it. Cue more Oohs.
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that the miniature Mike is actually a doll/puppet being controlled by his mother, but the below paragraph spoils how the magic box works, so only press the button if you don’t want the illusion ruined.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script
src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#hide").click(function(){
$("p").hide();
});
$("#show").click(function(){
$("p").show();
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<p>The box has a false back.
When the doors are opened, you can only see half of the box. This back wall
spins once the chocolate/Mike is inside, putting it/him on the side invisible
to the audience. See my diagram below:</p>
<p>The TV screen has a pocket
behind it. When an actor reaches in to remove the chocolate/Mike, they actually
reach into the pocket and take out the relevant prop. Meanwhile a pre-recorded clip
of an arm reaching in plays on the TV. The timing on this has to be perfect so I
suspect there’s some sort of subtle marker or countdown on the screen.</p>
<button
id="hide">Hide Secret</button>
<button
id="show">Show Secret</button>
</body>
</html>
Getting that to work was a lot harder than I planned. There
are loads of tutorials on hiding text and even more on hiding images, but very
few on hiding both.
In the book and both movies, after Mike is shrunk, Wonka
suggests that he is stretched to get back to his normal size (“Taffy puller?!”
“That was my idea.”)
However, in the musical, Mrs Teavee decides to keep her
‘little boy’ as he is, putting him in her handbag to keep him out of trouble.
Non-death – Charlie Bucket
I don’t know about you, but I’d almost forgotten she was in
this. After Mike finishes the tour ahead of time, the musical mostly follows
the 1971 movie (the scene that proves that Wonka is secretly George Weasley).
As the show doesn’t include fizzy lifting drinks (which were
in the book, but only in a room the characters didn’t go into), Wonka
doesn’t accuse them of stealing but does say that the Everlasting Gobstopper he
gave her counts as the ‘lifetime supply of candy’ advertised on the Golden
Ticket.
Grandpa Joe calls him a crook and they leave Charlie in Wonka’s office, where she looks in his notebook and makes a few additions of her own, including licorice bootlaces for her mother, who is on her feet a lot. Here’s the thing though:
You’ve just invented bootlaces, which already existed, but you’ve invented a slightly worse version that isn’t as strong. A ‘jokebook made of jellybeans’ would be equally as useless, although for slightly different reasons.
Also, licourice bootlaces already exist, but they’re no use as actual bootlaces because of their lack of strength.
At this point, Wonka comes in again and says that because of Charlie’s creativity, he’s going to give her the factory. This leads to the supposed piece de resistance of the show. Most modern musicals see it necessary to have something spectacular (see Phantom of the Opera’s chandelier, Les Misérables’ barricade, or Cats’ ‘boot falling from the ceiling’).
Charlie has one of these in the Great Glass Elevator. This was an absolute nightmare in production of the West End version, to the extent of not knowing if it would even be possible less than an hour before the first preview was due to start! See thisdocumentary for more info.
Put simply, the effect is that the elevator will rise out of the floor, surrounded by smoke, and then will slowly float across the stage while Wonka sings Pure Imagination. The mechanism to make this work was so temperamental that they actually rehearsed two slightly different versions of the scene (“This is my Great Glass Elevator” “But I can’t see anything” “That’s because it’s made of glass”).
Eventually, they did get it working, but the tour did it
differently again.
“Yeah, so about that ‘ole, we need to dig anuvver one, a couple metres away from the first. Yeah, my spades’ll sort it. Oh, while I’ve got you, you don’t ‘appen to have a forklift nearby, do ya? Nah, a silent one…”
In this version, due to the aforementioned hole-digging, the
Elevator drops from the ceiling. This I can deal with, but what I don’t get is
why it’s not made of glass? To clarify, when I say ‘drops,’ it’s on wires, it
doesn’t just plummet straight down.
“Good news, we’ve figured out a way to make that hole
without getting the spades involved. No, I don’t want to tell you how. Just go
out for a couple of hours and it’ll all be sorted when you get back.”
Fun fact: Carl the Set Technician is based on a Hugh
Bonneville character. One MILLION points if you can guess which one. He is also
named after my favourite Minion.
After Wonka drops Charlie off outside the factory, he hands
her the keys (one thing I’ll say for the gender change, it makes pronouns a lot
less ambiguous when talking about them), then disappears into the crowd. Charlie
catches up with him and he says that his time has come to an end.
In the West End version (last comparison, I promise) he
comes on a few minutes later in his homeless costume. He then does a short
monologue to the audience, turning around halfway through. As soon as he
finishes talking, his clothes collapse in a pile on the floor, the final
spectacle in the show.
In summary:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a great show, with
a fantastic and engaging cast. If you saw the West End version, don’t expect as
much from the tour. I advise watching Ellie Talks Theatre’svideo on the differences before you book, so you aren’t disappointed. If
you didn’t see the West End version, you should enjoy it even more. If you
don’t want to see the show, read the book, or
watch one of the movies.
That’s the review over, but the post still has a way to go. Now
we’re going to talk about Wonka’s Plan…
Wonka’s Plan
WARNING: THIS PART OF THE POST GETS EXTREMELY DARK AND
POTENTIALLY RUINS A LIGHT-HEARTED CHILDREN’S BOOK
For this section I will be focussing on the story itself,
not any particular adaptation, so for this section Charlie will be listed as a boy,
with he/him pronouns.
I already mentioned the conspiracy theory about Wonka being
George Weasley. Is it possible? Oliver Phelps (and, by sheer coincidence, James Phelps) was around 25 when the final Harry
Potter movie came out in 2011:
As the movies didn’t come out in real-time, George would
have only been 18 as of the final movie. In 2023, at the release of Wonka,
Timothée Chalamet is 28 years old, so he could have reinvented himself in that
time.
This has nothing to do with Wonka’s Plan. This is the
conspiracy that everything in the story happens by Wonka’s design. Don’t
believe me? Read this completely accurate description of the story:
An eccentric businessman offers children candy then
brutally maims and permanently disfigures them.
Sorry, that got a bit too dark. I’ll try to lighten up a
bit. Let’s study the first half of the story before we move back to the darker
bits.
Firstly, Wonka announces that he has put five golden tickets
in ordinary Wonka bars. It’s assumed that these are distributed randomly, but
that can’t possibly be the case, for reasons I’ll explain.
The first ticket is found in Bavaria by Augustus Gloop. In
my opinion, the best version of this is the 2005 movie, because in that version
he eats part of the ticket without noticing, and thereafter his ticket
is always shown with a bite taken out of it.
Ticket number two is found by Veruca Salt. Sometimes it’s
ambiguous where she’s from, but most versions have her hailing from England. She
gets the ticket by cheating, which is important for reasons I will soon
explain.
Ticket number three is found by Violet Beauregarde. Again,
her nationality is sometimes ambiguous, but most versions have her as
American.
The fourth ticket is found by Mike Teavee (that name still
irritates me), who is always American. The only adaptation to add to his
backstory is the 2005 movie, which says that he found the pattern, hacked
Wonka’s system, and only bought one chocolate bar.
Charlie finds the fifth ticket, and even he has a few false
starts. It’s his name on the poster, and most of the first act follows him, so
you know he’ll find one sooner or later, but for someone who only gets one bar
a year, he still has to buy four bars (his birthday one, the one Grandpa Joe
asks him to get, and the two he buys with the indeterminable currency he finds
in the street).
Now that we’ve cheered ourselves up somewhat, let’s have a
look at the children’s fate at the end of each of the major adaptations:
|
Child |
Book |
1971 movie |
2005 movie |
Stage
Musical |
|
Augustus Gloop |
Covered in chocolate
but also a lot thinner thanks to being squeezed by the pipe |
Ambiguous |
Left the
factory covered in chocolate (“Stop eating yourself!” “But I taste so good!”) |
Fudge |
|
Violet
Beauregarde |
Normal but blue |
Ambiguous |
Incredibly
flexible, but blue |
Exploded (“No,
her bubble burst”) |
|
Veruca Salt |
Covered in
rubbish |
Ambiguous |
Covered in
rubbish |
Ambiguous |
|
Mike Teavee |
Ridiculously
tall |
Ambiguous |
Ridiculously
tall |
Tiny, living in
Mrs Teavee’s handbag |
|
Charlie Bucket |
Rocketing into
space with Wonka and the Bucket family (Full story detailed in Charlie and
the Great Glass Elevator) |
|
Living with
Wonka and the Bucket family in the factory |
Opening the
factory to all (Wonka retired/disappeared) |
Fun fact: In order to make sure I
got these right, I reread the book for the first time in about 20 years and
it’s absolutely nuts! Not the story; that’s mostly the same through all the
versions. The book is crazy because of how it treats certain words. For
example, in Chapter 1, which introduces the Bucket family, assisted by Quentin
Blake’s illustrations, the following sentence is included:
This is Charlie Bucket. He is Pleased to meet you.
What’s the opposite of hyperbole?
Because that’s what I just did. Dahl’s text gets way bigger, sometimes with
individual words taking up entire pages, and often at weird angles.
You might have noticed that I
didn’t list the ticket winners in the order they got their tickets. If you
didn’t notice, feel free to check. Instead, I have listed them in the order
they were ‘bumped off’ (or not, in Charlie’s case).
It’s sometimes debated (By who?
– Ed.) whether or not Wonka has access to the news, due to his reclusive
nature. However, in the book, he expressly says that he read about them in the
news, so it’s safe to assume that he at least has access to newspapers.
In the 1971 movie, he employs Mr
Wilkinson to play Slugworth trying to tempt the children to steal Wonka’s
secret Everlasting Gobstopper (there are many problems with that plan, but now
is not the time). The strange thing is though, how did Fake Slugworth always
know where the tickets would be found? The first four times, he is found at
press conferences, so could conceivably have just gone when the news hit, but with
Charlie, he apprehends him just as he’s running home from the store.
So how did he know?
Before we answer that question
though, let’s take a brief look at the opening of the 2005 movie:
The opening shows Wonka putting five
tickets in supposedly five random bars, but although some of the locations are
unclear, we know that the tickets were found in at least three countries over a
period of about a month. If Wonka did indeed put the tickets in at the same
time, they should have all been found within a matter of days from the same
shop.
In order for them to all be found
at different times and in different places, Wonka must have staggered the
release of the tickets, and at least known the approximate location of their
destination to have Fake Slugworth always be there on time.
So, did Wonka engineer who the
ticket winners would be? Maybe. That’s not the question I’m here to answer. I’m
here to talk about what happened next. As I mentioned, Wonka learns
about each of the winners from the news, so he has a short period of time in
which to make sure each child gets what they deserve. My suspicions were first
aroused by the following interaction in the Inventing Room:
Mike: If you hate gum so much, why
do you make it in your factory?
Wonka: Please don’t mumble; I’m a
trifle deaf in this ear.
[Exact dialogue varies depending on
version]
Mike raises a valid point here. In
The Inventing Room, Wonka refers to gum-chewing as ‘a disgusting habit,’ and in
The Chocolate Room he demonstrates how improvisation works:
Wonka: Anyone can do it. You! Say
something.
Violet: Chewing gum.
Wonka: Chewing gum is really gross,
chewing gum I hate the most. See?
So why does he make it in
his factory? My theory is, he didn’t until relatively recently. After seeing
Violet having found a ticket, he immediately started work on a gum-based
project. Why did he decide her fate would be to end up as a giant blueberry? We’ll
never know.
So, what about the other ticket
finders? Augustus gives the most notice, and let’s look at it from Wonka’s
perspective (informed by newspapers alone). What do we know about him? Well
firstly, he’s fat enormous. Secondly, he loves to eat everything,
including golden tickets (I still think that’s funny, 18 years later). So, his
fate should lie in the room aptly named ‘The Chocolate Room.’
Suppose you went into a (example
chosen purely for band recognisability) Coca-Cola factory and you came across a
room labeled ‘Cola Room;’ wouldn’t you be confused? A much more appropriate
name for the Chocolate Room would be The Chocolate Mixing Room, unless
it’s recently been rebranded to incorporate an entirely sweet-based edible
nature theme (“Even I am eatable, but that, my dear children, is called
cannibalism and is in fact frowned upon in most societies.”)
Even if Wonka did always mix
his chocolate by waterfall (an objectively terrible wayto mix chocolate BTW), there’s absolutely no reason for the rest of the
room to be edible nature (as I write this, it’s botany week on Bake Off, so
edible nature is on my mind), so Augustus falling in the chocolate river could
have been engineered.
This leads to my other clue. The
Oompa Loompas do a song and dance about Augustus’ demise, and someone (person
varies upon version) comments that it seems rehearsed. Wonka denies this,
proving that improvisation is easy in the above exchange. Is it possible to improvise
something this long and detailed though? Yes, and youcan buy tickets to Showstopper: The Improvised Musical here. One of the
main clues is that almost all the rhymes are in couplets (I don’t count the 1971
Oompa Loompa songs as canon, mainly because the ‘s’ in songs is redundant).
However, if we assume that Wonka
engineered Augustus’ demise, this would give the Oompas some time to perfect
their song. Weirdly, the hardest part of improvising a song in real-time is
keeping a stable tune. You don’t need to know why I know that. Maybe I’m
secretly Bernie Taupin.
The next ticket finder, Veruca,
cheated. Therefore, Wonka had to think of a special punishment for her. You
might also notice that Mr (and sometimes Mrs) Salt is the only parent(s) to suffer with their child. Veruca’s punishment is possibly the least violent but
is also the most elaborate. It originates from her father also being in the nut
business (which could have given Wonka the idea) and relies on her spoiled
nature (“All I've got at home is one pony and two dogs and four cats and six
bunny rabbits and two parakeets and three canaries and a green parrot and a
turtle, and a silly old hamster! I WANT A SQUIRREL!”) As Grandma Georgina (grandparent
changes depending on version) observes:
“No good ever comes from spoiling a
child.”
Wonka wouldn’t have had time to acquire
and train 100 squirrels to sort nuts in the time between her ‘finding’ the ticket
and the tour, so he must have just based his plan on taking her to the
appropriate room and tempting her selfish nature. He could, however, have
trained them to attack her and test if she was a bad nut.
But why was Veruca’s fate switched
to happen after Violet’s? We can but speculate, but my personal theory is that he
wanted her to feel special for longer, to make her fall from grace even more humiliating.
This brings us to Mike. Except for
the 1971 version (this bit I also count as non-canonical), Mike rides in the
Great Glass Elevator. The 2005 movie says, “This is by far the fastest way to
get around the factory, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” In the
book, Wonka suggests it because most of the rest of the tour is spent running
through the factory and Mike complains that he is exhausted. In both cases,
Wonka only thinks to mention it after ‘three nasty little children’ have gone
(Veruca also complains in the book, but he ignores her).
The stage show (also non-canon according
to me in this regard) also has Veruca ride the elevator, but that can be
ignored because what is relevant doesn’t apply in that case.
In the 2005 movie, the stage show,
and the book, Mike is allowed to pick a room himself from one of the many
buttons adorning (this doesn’t feel like the right word, but I can’t think of a
better one) the elevator. There is a button labelled with his namesake and
favorite obsession right at his eyeline.
Wonka also says in at least one
version (I’ve forgotten which) that he abhors television and doesn’t watch it
himself, so his having a TV room doesn’t really make sense for the same reason
as his gum manufacture. And given the fame of his chocolate (especially thanks
to his most recent marketing campaign), does he really need television
advertising? This is just further confirmation bias to back up my theory.
Finally, we have Charlie (once
again, he/him for the purpose of this part of the blog). Charlie doesn’t really
have any negative aspects; that’s the main point of his character and why he’s
the protagonist. Therefore, Wonka wouldn’t need to ‘teach him a lesson.’ I’m
going to reference the 1971 version again, much as it pains me to do so. In the
case of all the other ticket winners, Fake Slugworth turned up with the other
media correspondents, but with Charlie, he apprehended him (I don’t regret the
pronoun reversion yet) immediately after he found the ticket.
Why? Because it was too late. Wonka
distributed the tickets all over the world so that they would be found at
different times, meaning he must have put the tickets into circulation at
different times. The final ticket was found practically on Wonka’s doorstep,
making it the easiest to control the destiny of. He could even have planted the
money that Charlie finds (or Fake Slugworth could).
Despite the ticket being the most
controllable, Charlie only finds it the day before the factory tour. This
wouldn’t give enough time for a press conference, so Fake Slugworth has to
apprehend him in person, something he
could only have done if he already knew where the ticket was. This should have
tipped us off that something was up.
Given how much control Wonka had
over the other tickets, making sure they only went to the worst children* at
various times and with specific punishments in mind, it’s almost certain that
he always intended to give Charlie the factory, which makes his homeless alter
ego from the West End show make even more sense.
*Have you ever noticed that Wonka states
in his initial marketing campaign, and on the ticket itself, that they are
supposed to be won by children (we later find out that this is because he wants
an heir) and despite the fact that adults are also buying loads of chocolate,
the tickets are only found by children? More confirmation bias of Wonka being
in control? Yes, please.
I don’t really have anything else
to say, apart from congratulating you for getting this far. Your reward is a
nap, which you probably need by now.
Carl the Set Technician will return.
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