Hit QPAC show Charlie and the Chocolate Factory leaves town early to avoid lockdown

They thought they had their golden tickets but thousands expecting to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this week were left disappointed.

Generally in the theatre world that old adage “the show must go on” is adhered to as closely as possible. But we live in difficult times and the producers of the hit musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory dispensed with that maxim this week.

The show packed up and left for Perth in a hurry leaving devastated patrons in their wake.

Patrons were notified Tuesday that the remaining shows in an extended season due to finish Saturday were cancelled and that a refund would be forthcoming.

The show will play next in Perth and the producers, rather than get caught in a lockdown in Brisbane (one that never eventuated), decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

QPAC chief executive John Kotzas says he is as disappointed as everyone else.

Our local Charlies - Phineaus Knickerbocker, Cooper Matthews and Flynn Nowlan - Picture: Richard Walker

“Yesterday we unfortunately had to inform ticketholders for the final three performances - Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week - that their shows are now cancelled due to uncertainty around travel and border restrictions that put the Perth Charlie season in doubt,” Kotzas says.

“But if we had kept them on for another week the tour to Perth was in great jeopardy if we had gone into lockdown. It was one of the hardest decisions we have had to make. A couple of thousand people missed out here but tens of thousands would have missed out in Perth.”

Not that Brisbane punters would be to sympathetic about that.

Kotzas says the company had made huge sacrifices to be here, including quarantining, just to be here in the first place and rehearsing by zoom in lockdown. It’s been a rocky ride but he reckons it was something of a miracle that we had it at all and when it was on it was a beacon of hope for the theatre world.

“Although it was a very hard decision for us to disappoint our own patrons, we do feel extremely lucky to have been able to host a full season of this much-loved musical, that we had been able to extend three times and the final three performances were going to be an added bonus,” Kotzas says. “It was a decision made to ensure that the Charlie company would be able to keep performing and was not a decision taken lightly.

Stephen Anderson (Willy Wonka) and Lucy Maunder (Mrs Bucket) have absconded to Perth while young Cooper Matthews has served his time as Charlie in the Brisbane season of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Picture David Clark

“We extend our sincerest apologies to ticketholders for these cancelled performances as we understand they will be very disappointed to miss the show. For large touring musicals like Charlie, the logistics of travel are always complex, but this current environment makes it even trickier with varying travel and border restrictions.

“We work hard with our partners to be very agile to enable the ongoing presentation of large-scale productions to Brisbane audiences, but the compromise is staying abreast of the uncertain environment and sometimes having to make very difficult decisions like this one.

“Of course, we always try to make decisions with the best interests of our patrons in mind, in this instance we had to think bigger than ourselves and for the greater good, weighing up three performances here against a whole season in Perth.”

QPAC presented the show in conjunction with producer John Frost for Crossroads Live, Warner Bros Theatre Ventures, Langley Park Productions and Neal Street Productions. It was originally due to play in 2020 but Covid killed that season.

Luckily the show managed to get through the recent school holiday period without a lockdown and John Kotzas says it was extended several times but in the end they had to pull the plug.

He says he wants to make it up to patrons not just with a refund. So if you missed out QPAC may have some other little treat in store to help soften the blow. Meanwhile ladies and gentlemen, we’re sorry, your golden tickets are now invalid.