Theatre review: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Playhouse, Edinburgh - 'Elaine C Smith delivers a wonderfully throaty and scary Childcatcher'
This production is a slightly bitty and occasionally cloth-eared affair, yet the central magic of the show is handled with such exuberance that the audience is carried along for the ride, writes Joyce McMillan
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Playhouse, Edinburgh ****
The Way, The Truth And The Life, Oran Mor, Glasgow ***
Conceived in the pre-1960s golden age of British driving, the story of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is about as daft and doubtful as a children’s tale can be, both in its original version by Ian Fleming, and in the famous film adaptation by director Ken Hughes and Roald Dahl, on which the stage musical is based.
In this quintessentially English yarn, the hero is an eccentric but brilliant inventor called Caractacus Potts, who lives with his empire-roaming old Dad and his delightful twin children Jeremy and Jemima. The villains, by contrast, are a bunch of dastardly foreigners with cod German accents called The Vulgarians, comic baddies led by the child-hating Baron and Baroness – the Ma and Pa Ubu of children’s storytelling – and a seriously scary Childcatcher.
And the catalyst for the narrative, of course, is the magical car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, saved from the junkyard by Potts and his children, and possessed of magical powers that enable the Potts family and their new pal Truly Scrumptious – a no-nonsense motorbike-riding New Woman – to defeat the Vulgarians’ dastardly schemes.
All of which makes it the more surprising that this strange tale, borne aloft on a stream of gorgeous songs by the Sherman Brothers, has become such an enduring and much-loved global hit. The current new touring production – produced by David Ian and directed by Thom Southerland – is in truth a slightly bitty and occasionally cloth-eared affair, with a tendency to rush or overproduce what should be key narrative and musical moments, particularly the gorgeous lullaby Hushabye Mountain.
Yet the central magic of the show – the restoration of the beautiful car, and the magnificent moment when it unfurls its wings and takes to the air – is handled with such exuberance that the audience is carried along on a tide of pure pleasure. Adam Garcia is a youthful and hesitant but appealing Caractacus, Ellie Nunn is a terrific Truly Scrumptious, Elaine C Smith delivers a wonderfully throaty and scary white-face version of the Childcatcher.
At the performance I saw, young actors Charlie McGuire and Isla Ithier were heart-wrenchingly brilliant as the Potts twins, accompanied – when the Potts family finally storm the Baron’s Castle – by a whole chorus of local youngsters singing and acting their socks off, as the surviving clan of Vulgarian children who have managed to avoid the Childcatcher’s grasp, and somehow to keep hope alive.
Mike O’Donnell’s The Way, The Truth, And The Life, by contrast – the latest Play, Pie And Pint lunchtime drama – is anything but a silly story. Set in an old Catholic church in the west of Scotland that is about to be converted into a bar and restaurant, the play revolves around a tense encounter between a forty-something brother and sister whose adult lives have taken very different paths. After some years as a young gay man in London, Jim has become a priest in the local parish; his sister Mary has moved to Edinburgh, and is now a high-flying adviser to the property development company selling the church.
Neither, though, has fully come to terms with a family legacy that touches on issues of political violence and complicity, rather than the more familiar territory of family abuse. The structure of this brief 40 minute play is a little tentative, revealing the key theme of the drama too late to explore it fully; but in Kate Nelson’s thoughtful production, Kevin Lennon and Rosalind Sydney give two powerful performances, as a brother and sister bound together by family and history, but separated by their very different ways of dealing with a past that is not only troubling, but still largely hidden.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 11-15 June; the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 27 August until 8 September; and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 10-15 September. The Way, The Truth, and The Life, run ended.