There is no life I know to compare with pure imaganation

On Friday, I went out with some friends to see another high school put on the musical, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It's based off the movie from the 1970's but is obviously very different from the original. There are extra songs, slight alterations to the story and characters, heck, even they switched Mike Teavee into Mikayla Teavee. But I digress.

~Acting~

All of the cast seem very devoted to their part; from the kind Charlie Bucket to the whimsical Willy Wonka. Every seemed to have fun playing their characters. Even when they got a guy to play Mrs. Gloop! That was my favorite character out of the entire musical! It was like Monty Python when the cast is cross-dressing and I loved it so much! Plus it was a very humorous part to go along with. The other ticket finders were played exactly how they're supposed to be: bratty, obnoxious and greedy. Though two other of my favorite characters were the Candyman and Grandpa George. I liked the Candyman because he could dance and was portrayed as a caring and fun character, and Grandpa George was portrayed as an old man losing his hearing and saying a whole bunch of random and silly things. Overall, acting's a perfect 10 out of 10.

~Singing/Dancing/Music~

This next part's a hit and miss sadly. I could immediately tell from the first song that some of the singing wasn't that great. Not because they can't sing well, but because of voice projection. It didn't help I was sitting a couple rows away from the orchestra either. A lot of the actors didn't sing loud enough over the orchestra which kinda bugged me a bit. And since I'm talking about it, the orchestra was really good. Granted of course there were a little less than ten people, they played the music beautifully. And you didn't really need a whole lot of instruments for this particular music because it works so well. As for the dancing, it was lively and energetic and I loved it. Nuff said.

~Set/Lights/Visuals/etc.~

The set was pretty simple. Not great, but simple. For the most part, scenes just took place in front of the curtain with some props. For the entire first act, the set to the Bucket home was just left there and you had to imagine that it wasn't there at a lot of scenes, but it was somewhat of an eyesore. Not that it was bad, but I wasn't too fond of it.

In the second act, they had walls that spelled "Wonka" which was there the entire time with the exception when sections of the wall were taken out for the different "rooms" they were in, like the Inventing Room and the Nut Sorting room. The only time I saw the set in the entire second act change was the Chocolate Room, but it looked too simple other than the chocolate waterfall made out of satin fabric where it was moved to look like an actual waterfall. And there was also the boat ride scene, but it was very impressive because of the lights. While there weren't any creepy footage of chickens getting decapitated, the lights were very over the top. I figured out what strobe lights were when we were warned about them and was about to get a headache cause they were flashing right in my face. I thought it was really funny when it just went black and all you hear is the actors screaming their heads off.

Another couple funny visuals were Violet turning into a blueberry and Mikayla being shrunk down. With Violet, they had the actress wear some type of shirt that blew up and I thought that was pretty cool. With Mikayla when she was "shrunk", the guy who played Wonka pulled a puppet that looked like Mikayla out of the TV. Granted it's pretty cheap, but I thought it was freaking hysterical cause I had no idea how the heck they were gonna pull something like that off and I was not expecting the puppet. So to me, that was hilarious.

Some other visuals that didn't really hit the mark were the Fizzing Lifting Drink room and the Flying Glass Elevator. Now cause it's a high school musical they could only do so much, but I just saw the characters in front of a projection screen with a blue screen. I just didn't feel like they were "flying" but that's just my opinion so I can't really complain too much about that.

~Overall~

While it's not the best production of a musical I've seen, it's not like it's total crap. For what it was, it was really well done. I enjoyed it even if some things didn't really hit the mark. I loved the music and a lot of the characters that were super funny. If I had to rate this..... probably a.... 7.9/10.