In the national touring production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang currently running at the Hippodrome Theatre, a car takes the final bow.
And that's fitting.
Though the production is based on the beloved 1968 film and features a cheery, family-friendly plot, an insistently catchy score and a cast with unusually strong voices, the show's true star is the auto that floats and flies.
Grumble all you want about how chandeliers that plunge from the ceiling (as in Phantom of the Opera) and helicopters landing on stage (a la Miss Saigon) are cheap tricks that get in the way of a Genuine Theatrical Experience.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a show about special effects. It celebrates theatrical artifice and invention. Its gimmicks work really well, with every cable and pulley expertly concealed.
And because nothing beats seeing the unbelievable with your own eyes, I would argue that the stage show exerts an even greater impact than the movie, though the live performance regrettably lacks the talents of the movie's lead actor, the inimitable Dick Van Dyke.
I've never seen a flying scene done as well as this one. Nearly always, the audience can see the wires that haul performers around the stage, and that inevitably robs the remarkable of its mystery.
I was seated in the fifth row of the Hippodrome, and I looked hard, but I couldn't spot the mechanism used to hoist that vehicle into the air, with four performers seated inside. It helped that the lights went down, and the auto was silhouetted against a black, star-studded sky. Still, there was nary a gleam of silver wire or of a platform rising from the stage floor.
Take another bow, Chitty.
As for the plot, well, it's always been as sugary and full of holes as Toot Sweets, "the candies you whistle, the whistles you eat."
Let's see: Caractacus Potts, an eccentric inventor and widower, and his two children, Jemima and Jeremy, travel to Vulgaria to foil the villainous Baron and Baroness of that vaguely Teutonic land, who are determined to steal Chitty, the Pottses' car, for themselves. Helping the Potts family is candy heiress Truly Scrumptious. The intrepid foursome must also rescue Grandpa Potts, who has been kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity, while outwitting the machinations of the evil Child Catcher.
Chitty is based on a story written by Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books, and it's fun to spot the similarities between Fleming's fairy tales for children and adults.
