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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Broadway Cast Recording gets ✭✭✭✭✭ from britishtheatre.com

I was a HUGE fan of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when it opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane with a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Audiences were presented with a theatrical extravaganza, but what really struck me was the fabulous score which used only one song from the Gene Wilder film.

Shaiman and Wittman had pulled off the near impossible by channelling the Wonka zeitgeist, creating new music for Charlie of the same calibre and Bricusse and Newley's original film score.

I was therefore interested to hear that for the Broadway production changes were to be made. More song moments from the film have been integrated, numbers from the London score cut (luckily the London cast album exists!) and new songs written.

Christian Borle takes over the spoon of iconic chocolatier Willy Wonka and his performance is nothing short of spectacular. His tooth-tickling-tongue-twisting-triptastical performance is mesmerising. His laser-sharp diction in songs like Strike That  Reverse It is superhuman and would put a certain modern major general to shame. There's sarcasm, humour, and enormous amounts of warmth in his performance iced with a demented frosting and it comes across in droves on this recording. Borle's interpretation of the show's new finale The View From Here and the classic Pure Imagination alone place him alongside Gene Wilder and Douglas Hodge as encapsulating the magic of Dahl and Wonka. The Cast album is on Sony Masterworks Broadway

READ THE FULL britishtheatre.com REVIEW