Willy’s Candy Spectacular is a pacey, fun musical of the viral disaster

What an oddity this new, self-described musical parody is. Written by its lead producer, Richard Kraft, and its director, Andy Fickman, and featuring a boisterously loud pop-rock score composed by a raft of songwriters, this cheap and acidically cheerful confection is based on Willy’s Chocolate Experience.
Dubbed the Glasgow fiasco, the latter was a family-aimed immersive rip-off that lasted one day in February this year. Children were in tears, and parents so up in arms that they called in the police. The infamous event garnered global attention after a meme of “sad Oompa Loompa” Kirsty Paterson went viral.
Fickman’s off-the-cuff staging — they’re calling it a “world premiere reading” — is constructed around Paterson who, in a curious act of revenge or self-exploitation, is playing herself. Alas, she hasn’t much to do except stand on the sidelines moaning morosely as the spotlight gets claimed by three other actors playing her.
Alongside her is our gimlet-eyed narrator Julie Dawn Cole, best known as Veruca Salt in the beloved 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Paris Themmen, aka Mike Teavee in the film, also joins the cast next week.
The rest of the ten-strong ensemble work like gangbusters, delivering a stream of jovially cynical tunes that both send up and enshrine the borderline-criminal venality and hysteria of the gob-stopping Glaswegian disaster.
The standout is Eric Petersen, a vocal powerhouse relishing every moment as the unscrupulous Willy Wonka-esque impresario behind it all. He’s terrific, whether exhorting us to Lower Our Expectations or shamelessly claiming his title as the Best Worst Guy.
Lodged inside this unabashedly self-referential show’s hyperactive tongue-in-cheek style are some mildly intriguing notions about how easily and avidly contemporary culture feeds off itself. Hard to believe, though, that the post-Fringe goal is to take it to the West End or Broadway. There is pacey fun to be had here, but no golden ticket.★★★✰✰60minTo August 26, pleasance.co.uk
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