Pure Theatrical Imagination: The Sweet and Sticky History of Wonka Onstage

Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory has opened its doors again, but this time, Wonka is younger, nicer, and — well, he doesn’t actually have his factory yet.

Based on the 1964 children’s book by author Roald Dahl, the Wonka story centers around a young boy from a poor family who has a miraculous stroke of luck when he wins one of the five coveted Golden Tickets to attend a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Gene Wilder made the character of Wonka famous in the 1971 film adaptation, which was retitled to include Wonka’s name instead of Charlie’s. Though maintaining the original title, Tim Burton’s 2005 adaptation restructured the story with Wonka as the protagonist. Now, a Wonka origin story has just been released titled Wonka. Starring Timothée Chalamet as the title character, this film follows in the musical tradition of previous adaptations with original song and dance numbers. In this story, Wonka has just moved to the city, eager to make his delicious mark on the world.

So why the shift from Charlie to Wonka again?

“He [Charlie] is kind of a sap, especially in the film,” says Tim McDonald, the co-writer for the story’s first major stage musical adaptation, Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka. “Everything just happens to him and that was the problem. So how do you give him agency? How do you make him so that it’s just not ‘and then this happened, and this happened’? That’s the hardest part of it.”

Before McDonald worked on the 2004 musical, he had been interested in taking the story he grew up with and putting it on the stage for children with Music Theatre International. “I pitched to Freddie [Gersh]: We should turn Willy Wonka into a musical for Broadway Jr.,” he says. “He happened to be very good friends with Leslie Bricusse, who had [already] proposed to the Dahl estate a musical version.” Bricusse was not new to the material. Along with Anthony Newley, he had written memorable songs to the original 1971 film, including “Pure Imagination.”

But there was a snag: Not only did the Dahl estate hate the original film (this dislike stemmed from Dahl himself), but all of the legal rights were divided between various parties. Bricusse held the rights to the songs, but the Dahl estate held the rights for the book and, ultimately, would need to give final approval for a musical adaptation.

“Leslie said, ‘Look, if you can convince [Dahl’s widow] Liccy to do it, great,’” says McDonald.

So off went McDonald to Gypsy House, the longtime home of the Dahl family in the English countryside. His assignment was a daunting one: to convince Liccy that he was the right person to bring the stage musical to life.

“She said, ‘How would you tell your story?’” McDonald’s answer proved to be what cemented the deal. “I said, ‘It’s about a kid who breaks the rules, admits it, and because of that, he wins everything.” This vision won Liccy over and led to a long friendship of rich discussion and learning.

Even though McDonald now had permission from the Dahl estate, there was one more problem. “I got sued by Warner Brothers”, McDonald says. “We were supposed to do this test version of it in Truckee, California, and we got a letter from Warner Brothers that was a cease and desist, because they claimed that they owned the music. And because the budget for the film was so low, they didn’t want to pay Leslie what they should have so, he retained his ownership.”

Eventually, however, the matter was settled, and the production went forward, resulting in a Broadway Jr. version and another version starring adults — performed at the Kennedy Center, no less.

When reflecting on what aspect of his adaptation that he is most proud, he looks back to that original pitch to Liccy. “Charlie does wrong; he breaks the rules. But he goes to Wonka, and he admits it. That’s why he wins: he made a mistake, but he was smart enough to admit it. We all do things that are wrong, but to admit it, ask for forgiveness, and be given forgiveness is a beautiful lesson for all humans, and for young people.”

Songwriting duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman came to the material in an entirely different manner. Director Sam Mendes and musical theater book writer David Grieg were already attached to the project when they were invited to New York for a meeting about a new musical adaptation.

Bricusse and McDonald’s version was a musical extension of the original film. Shaiman and Wittman, however, had a different approach for their West End-bound musical, with blessings from Warner Bros. and the Dahl estate.

Shaiman: “They said ‘No songs from the movie. We want it to be a completely new, fresh take.’ And with no disrespect to those brilliant, iconic songs, that was what allowed us to say yes because we felt that we weren’t filling in the gaps but are creating something new.”

Wittman: “We started from the book. That was the Bible.”

With “the Bible” in hand, Wittman and Shaiman got to work writing a completely original score.

Wittman: “When we first wrote the score, we had a very kind-of almost punk-rock opening that was people jonesing for chocolate.”

Shaiman: “It was called ‘Sweet Tooth,’ and it was like Trainspotting. I hate to use the word ‘edgy,’ but here I am using it. When you work on a project that’s this corporate, it’s very tough.”

On the Wonka/Charlie dynamic, Shaiman thought of the characters in religious terms. “Willy Wonka is that vengeful God, and Charlie is like Jesus. He’s saying, ‘Here, I have a better way to treat people.’ I always had that kind of religious thing in the back of my head. It never quite materialized as part of the show.”

As the duo was writing, collaborating, and participating in production meetings, they received some news. “The edict came from Warner Brothers that they wanted ‘Pure Imagination’ in the show,” says Wittman. “We struggled with that. We had written a song that explained Willy’s artistic bent called ‘Simply Second Nature’ about people drawing outside the lines. It was very much his philosophy on being an artist, and ‘Pure Imagination’ lyrically has nothing to do with that.”

“The big mistake for our song was that it was in the spot where ‘Pure Imagination’ is in the movie,” says Shaiman. “When the music would start, you could feel the audience going, ‘Oh, it’s not the song we want.’”

The show opened on the West End in 2013 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Douglas Hodge playing the role of Wonka. Though reviews were mixed, the production broke box office records late that year when it earned £1,080,260 for a week’s worth of tickets. That West End production closed in January of 2017, only three months before a revised version of the show was set to open on Broadway. In the London production, “Pure Imagination” was the only legacy song in the score.

Shaiman: “Towards the end of England, we’d had another reading of new material. At that point, they said, ‘If we’re going to take it to New York, we want even more songs in the movie.’”

Wittman: “I like to say, ‘The less said about Broadway, the better.’”

Shaiman: “It [the Broadway production] just didn’t gel. And although we had Christian Borle, who was so fantastic, there were just too many chefs at that point. We had the Dahl estate. We had Warner Brothers. We had a new creative team.”

Despite these shake-ups in the score, they remain proud of their work on the musical, particularly the closing number, “The View From Here,” where Wonka gives his factory to Charlie.

Shaiman: “We gave up ‘Simply Second Nature’ so that we could put ‘Pure Imagination’ where the audience wanted it to be. But we wanted ‘The View From Here,’ the song that would sum up the show at the end. And I’m very proud of it.”

Wonka, the new film version from Paddington director Paul King, features original songs by Neil Hannon of the chamber pop group the Divine Comedy. Still, the film is deliberately set in the world of the 1971 film with key elements like the original Oompa-Loompa designs as well as some of those beloved songs, interspersed with the new. The central musical motif throughout the film is “Pure Imagination,” which culminates in a sung rendition with newly written lyrics. The inclusion of this song, even in a new story, demonstrates that sometimes a musical legacy is too powerful to completely reinvent.