Theater director Fariba Deliri will stage an adaptation of the famous children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” written by British author Roald Dahl at Honar Hall in Tehran in mid July.
The Persian adaptation is a mix of puppetry and live performance, Mehr News Agency reported on its Persian website.
Written in 1964, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tells the story of young Charlie Bucket from a poor family who wins a golden ticket to visit the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka along with four other children.
According to Deliri, the show is an ambitious musical production with diverse settings, custom designs and more than a dozen actors and puppeteers.
The cast includes some of known professionals in the field (children’s theater) such as Minoush Rahimian, Arash Sadeqian-Haqiqi, Aryan Nasseri-Mehr and Shirin Kashefi.
Also a writer, set designer and translator, Deliri, 52, has a history of working in puppetry and children’s theater. Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.
The celebrated children’s author uses chocolate as a symbol in the book, as the ultimate indulgence, to relay a message about the dangers of greed. Other than Charlie, the other four of the naughty children are greedy in some way: Augustus, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating represents gluttony; Violet is greedy for gum, Mike is greedy for television; Veruca is a spoiled brat.
Dahl’s story illustrates how greed can consume and ultimately destroy a person, particularly children, since each child is changed forever as a result of his or her greed. Charlie, the hero, is an honest and kind boy, a symbol of innocence.
Based on the book two movies have been made so far: “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” starring Gene Wilder in 1971, and Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 2005 with Johnny Depp as the mysterious Willy Wonka.
The book was adapted for a musical play in London’s West End in 2013 and went on a more penchant project on Broadway written and directed by Sam Mendes in 2017.
