We here at the HRACT Awards love a good Sherman Brothers’ musical, so we were excited when Williamsburg Players announced their season included the old classic, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”  We also knew that “Chitty” was going to be quite a challenge to bring to life – it is a big cast (half of which are children), and, considering the main character is an inventor (who, you know, creates an iconic looking sentient car that also floats and flies), requires one of the heaviest lifts on props of any show we have seen over the last few years. 

The big cast is led by Jahi Mendes, making his Williamsburg Players’ debut as Caractacus Potts.  Taking on any role originally done by Dick Van Dyke has to be daunting, but Mendes was unfazed.  He was quite good at bringing the whimsical feel to the role, and impressed us with his singing from the beginning, with “You Two” standing out as one of our favorite numbers.  Mendes also brought out the best in the “two” he was singing about – his kids Jeremy and Jemima Potts.  Jeremy, who in our performance was played by Kaiden Crill (who shares the role with Dalen Heberlig), and Jemima, played by Caroline Shoemaker in our performance and by Shirley Honenberger on other nights, are hugely important to the show, as they essentially act as the audience’s window to this phantasmagorical world.  Crill and Shoemaker worked really well together, and we could absolutely picture ourselves right there with them trying to convince Truly Scrumptious (played by the talented Elizabeth Gallant) to become our step-mom in this wild family.  And speaking of family – we can’t leave out Grampa Potts, played by Michael Parodi and Jon Ward at different performances (we had Parodi).  Parodi brought the grampa energy with his insistence of telling the same stories time and again, and we couldn’t help but chuckle when his character was mistaken for being the inventor that brought Chitty to life – the irony being that he, along with David Lee, are credited in the playbill for in fact being the ones who created Chitty the car and the various gadgets.

Let’s talk more about those props and gadgets on stage – as they were so impressive.  You just never knew what was going to come out next, and that took a whole team of prop people to make happen, led by the aforementioned Lee and Parodi.  Chitty himself (the car) looked just like the car from the original film.  The Potts’ house had the niftiest kitchen area I had ever seen, with a different gadget for each kitchen task.  There was an automated barber shop on a bike, a line running across the ceiling on which a zeppelin transported an outhouse across the European continent, and a cage on wheels – the list goes on and on, but suffice it to say, this play had some of the coolest props we have seen on a local stage.   

Once you see Chitty in his final form, you will absolutely understand why the vile Vulgarians want to steal him away from the Potts family.  Luckily for us, while they are pure evil, the Vulgarians demonstrate their evil-ness in hilarious and over-the-top ways.  Keith Bocklet and Shawn Blasingame as Baron and Baroness Bomburst lead the charge in Vulgaria, but they leave most of the dirty work to evil spies and designated childcatchers.  The spies, Goran and Boris, played by Isaac Kelce and Jackson Kirvan, were a joy to watch, as they felt like cartoon villains, hiding behind face-in-the-holes and tiny trees that they carried with them onto the stage.  The childcatcher, played by MJ Devaney, and her helper, played by Brigid McArdle, did bring some legitimate scariness to the Vulgars, as is appropriate for individuals whose sole goal in life seems to be doing away with children. 

The villains had some pretty awesome costumes, brought to us by MJ Devaney and her team, who also did a really nice job of making the ensemble pop off the stage with bright colors when called for, and dingy, look-like-you-live-in-a-sewer costumes when those are necessary.  The ensemble filled out this whimsical world nicely, and were parts of numerous fun numbers, from “Toot Sweets” in the first act to “Teamwork” in the second.

Frequent readers will know that we always appreciate a live band – so thank you to Musical Director Steven Thompson and the band for bringing an evening of Sherman Brothers’ refrains the way they were intended to be performed – live.  Frequent readers also know how much we like seeing our community theaters take big swings – and you know it was a big swing when the production team page of the playbill is as large as it was for “Chitty”.  So thank you to director Jacqueline Kilduff for putting the work and coordination in to make this show happen – it does not go unnoticed!  Now, if you stay for a few more paragraphs, I’ve got a trip to India I must tell you about…