READ THE REVIEWS:

April 23, 2017

Don’t expect a sugar rush from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the new musical that opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Sunday. This latest adaptation of Roald Dahl’s winningly sinister children’s story from 1964 is — thank heaven — no sweeter than the two film adaptations it inspired, starring Gene Wilder (1971) and Johnny Depp (2005).

READ THE REVIEW

April 23, 2017

The producers of the stage musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, led by Warner Bros Theatre Ventures, have pulled a Harvey Weinstein. As Weinstein did with his stage version of Finding Neverland, they tossed most of the original U.K. production and came to Broadway with a fresh remake: Simplified production concept, significantly buffed-up score and American veteran Jack O’Brien replacing Sam Mendes, who not only staged the London show but was, and remains, a co-producer (with Warners and Langley Park Productions).

READ THE REVIEW

April 23, 2017

Malted milk balls, chocolate bars, sweet jars and other candied treats of all delights are stacked high in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. You’d expect that — right? — at a musical called “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” a show based on the most famous and beloved of all the Roald Dahl grotesque masterpieces, the fantastic 1964 story wherein a poor and unassuming kid named Charlie Bucket gets to walk into a factory modeled on that of John Cadbury himself, and who then has his life transformed by Willy Wonka, a sparkly eccentric and ebullient chocolatier with a moralistic sideline in Darwinian kiddie selection.

READ THE REVIEW
Nbc New York
BigThumbs_DOWN

Robert
Kahn

April 23, 2017

The best thing about Broadway’s new “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is the inventively savage and barbarous ways that all the Golden Ticket winners—except, that is, for Charlie Bucket—die.

READ THE REVIEW

April 23, 2017

Strangers with candy should be avoided, our parents warn. Roald Dahl urges us to grab the sugary goods—but be prepared for the consequences. Families who accept the treats currently proferred at the Lunt-Fontanne, though, are in for a rough time on Broadway. Joyless, shapeless and grating, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a stale Necco wafer of a musical.

READ THE REVIEW