Bangin' It Out

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang comes to Boston in the form of a musical stage performance. How on earth do they make that car fly?

Photo courtesy of www.BroadwayMusicalhome.com

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had a permanent home in VCRs across the country when most Americans were growing up. Now the musical production is coming to the Citi Wang Theater.

Apparently this isn't the same dog and pony and funny moustache show that we're all used to. According to cast member Steve Wilson, this production is more like our favorite Chitty Chitty on some Chitty Chitty speed. 

Wilson plays the part of Caractacus Potts, patriarch of the all-singing, all-dancing Potts family who are known for driving around in a flying car. A myriad of other colorful characters are involved in the two-and-a-half-hour, action-packed production, but Wilson knows the real reason people fill up the seats every night.

“Obviously, when the name is ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,’ everyone is waiting to see how we’re gonna make the car fly,” he says. “When the car does in fact leave the ground and the headlights are pointed out into the audience, looking over the faces of not only children but their parents and grandparents, they all have the same face: their jaws in their laps and their eyes all lit up.”

My one problem with Wilson is that he hasn't even seen the movie the whole way through. What's up with that? I don't think you can truly channel Dick Van Dyke without studying hours of his tap dancing skills. 

Wilson confesses that though he hasn’t seen the movie all the way through, he plays the Caractacus Potts character with the same honesty and sincerity that Dick Van Dyke did in the 1968 cinema
classic.

“We know it’s a show about a car, but I wanted to make sure that I held up my end of the story line, which is playing a father who is trying to raise his two kids after having lost his wife.”

Bummer. Hopefully this won't be a typical move to stage show and totally blow. Although considering it's about a car, it probably will. 

Perhaps I'm just not going to see it because I'm still terrified of the kidnapping scene. That's reason enough not to see it, right?