'Willy Wonka' takes Staples stage next weekend

Staples Players Summer Theatre will stage four performances of "Willy Wonka" next weekend in the mainstage theater of Staples High School.

The show opens Friday, July 27, and includes two evening performances and two matinees over its three-day run.

The stage play is an adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1964 novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." It features songs from the classic 1971 film adaptation "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" that starred Gene Wilder in the title role as the eccentric chocolate maker.

The cast includes high school and college students from Westport, Weston, Fairfield and Trumbull and is directed by David Roth and Kerry Long.

Popular songs from the film version include "Candy Man," "Pure Imagination, " I've Got a Golden Ticket" and "I Want It Now." Those are supplemented by other songs by the same composers, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley.

"They did a great job expanding it to a full-length musical, but it's short enough that your little kids will sit through it," Roth said in a news release.

The plot involves Charlie Bucket and four other children who find golden tickets in their Wonka candy bars and are allowed inside the highly secretive chocolate factory.

"In talking with people about this show, it's amazing how many people had such vivid memories of seeing the movie for the first time," Long said in the release. "Many people burst into a chorus of `Candy Man' or `I've Got a Golden Ticket' upon hearing that we are working on "Willy Wonka."

Staples Players alumni Matthew Van Gessel, back from his freshman year at North Carolina School of the Arts, plays Willy Wonka. He said he was drawn to the part by "an obsession" with Wilder's performance in the role.

"He drips whimsy, and his eyes reveal a world-weary man who somehow managed to never grow up," Van Gessel said in the release.

To prepare for the role, he looked for speficic Wonka traits evident in real people.

"It was important to me that Wonka be a human with a soul rather than a silly weirdo. I drew from such real life eccentrics as Salvidor Dali, Howard Hughes, and Michael Jackson," he said.

Maddy Rozynek is one of two actresses in the double-cast show playing Violet Beauregarde, one of the five lucky kids to get a golden ticket. Rozynek has been working to capture Violet's southern accent.

"It isn't something that a person is able to pick up in one day and requires a lot of extra time at home to practice," she said in the release. The directors gave her a CD that provides training in developing the accent.

Her favorite part of the production, according to the release, is the costumes made by Marjorie Watt and Priscilla Stampa.

Annabelle Shea plays the Veruca Salt, a demanding and impatient golden-ticket holder. In the release, she said children should be fascinated by some of the technical effects, such as Charlie and Grandpa Joe floating on air in the Fizzy Lifting Drink room and all of the kids being crushed into a tiny room at the beginning of the show.

Andrea Metchick is the choreographer and Don Rickenback is the musical director.