CHITTY Chitty Bang Bang is being billed as"West Yorkshire Playhouse's biggest ever Christmas show", one big, bold claim that could set it up for a fall.
As it happens you do get plenty of Bang Bang for your buck because James Brining's production looks spectacular from the moment the windmill is spread out before you across all the stage in Simon Higlett's design for this "fantasmagorical stage musical".
Without giving too much away, the spectacle will continue unabated throughout, whenever Chitty Chitty Bang Bang takes to the waters or to the sky with its optional extras, reminding you of how Q equips James Bond's Aston Martin in that other creation by Chitty writer Ian Fleming.
Spectacle can only take you so far, although a musical like Starlight Express has done very well out of its wow factor, and so Brining, the WYP artistic director, must meet the challenge of making a show that connects with the audience more than merely visually.
Let's be honest, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a weird one: the car is the star and its best-known character is a vile creation, The Childcatcher (Stephen Matthews), the stuff of nightmares that linger in the memory beyond childhood, but he actually plays a smaller part than the villain in a traditional pantomime.
Fleming's characters are caricatures, right down to their names, and if Truly Scrumptious never made it into the Bond canon of Pussy Galore and Honey Ryder, you can just as easily imagine how she will be in Any Griffiths' pucker performance.
Jon Robyns's Caractacus Potts is a thoroughly decent fellow, but by far the better dialogue goes to his potty dad, Grandpa Potts in the show's most rewarding, energetic and humorous performance by Andy Hockley.
Scott Paige as Goran, left, and Sam Harrison as Boris, the Vulgarians, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Picture Alastair Muir
Tamsin Carroll's saucy Baroness Bomburst is a scene stealer par excellence and Jeremy Sams's script works best in the hands of Sam Harrison and Scott Paige's Germanic-sounding Vulgarians, Boris and Goran, who come across as 'Allo 'Allo! characters as if written by Mel Brooks in The Producers mode.
Neverthless, there are times when Chitty feels somewhat flat and out of emotional reach, as if it can't cover for its lack of soul and surfeit of silliness, and indeed its over-reliance on its title song in the Sherman Brothers' score. Thankfully, Stephen Mear's new choreography is top notch, more than matching the special effects and spectacle.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 30 2016. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk
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