In Baltimore's long history of hosting traveling theater productions, it's possible that a cast has never been so delighted to pull into town as the one that arrived, with a yelp, this week.
Has a performer ever literally jumped for joy and bounded down the steps of a tour bus? Has anyone actually quivered in anticipation, shaking from head to tail? And, in the storied shadow of the Hippodrome, has an artist, in oblivious contentment, ever relieved himself right on the cold, wet sidewalk?
If they haven't before, they have now.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's menagerie of four-legged cast members, from terriers to Pomeranians to poodles to mutts, significantly ups the ante when it comes to canine star turns. Annie might have had Sandy. Gypsy's Mama Rose had Chowsie. But with eight wriggling, wagging, panting and preening stage dogs, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang might just be breaking the fur ceiling.
"Everyone says never work with children or dogs," says Ray Roderick, the director who adapted the Broadway show into the touring production that opened this week at the Hippodrome and runs through Jan. 18. "Clearly, I disagree."
The musical focuses on a whimsical family of inventors and their efforts to harness the powers of a magical car while outsmarting an evil baron and baroness.
Though the dogs aren't exactly central to this plot (don't tell them, but they don't even make the Playbill), the family's sentimental anchor is Edison, its bedraggled pet. Edison's spotlighted role, combined with periodic appearances by the seven other canines, who play wild, roaming neighborhood dogs, adds layers of surprise and soul to the show.
Although the original Broadway show wasn't so heavily dogged, with his rewrite, Roderick insisted on paying homage to the beloved 1968 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie, which was.
"I wanted those iconic moments from the movie as best as we could get them on stage," he says.
Of those classic dog scenes, one of the most memorable would have to be one in which the family realizes that their newly invented whistling candy, Toot Sweets, creates a noise that's irresistible to the canine ear. With just a lick and a few notes, all the neighborhood dogs come running.
In the show, the pack of small, feisty dogs bursts onto the stage and then sprints across it at full speed, seemingly willy-nilly. Though paws seem to by flying, it's in fact a controlled brand of chaos - controlled, that is, by Joanne Wilson, the production's noted trainer, constant wrangler and occasional pooper scooper.
