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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

Adapted from the film by Jeremy Sams

Directed by Adrian Noble

At Canon Theatre in Toronto

Never work with children or animals, W.C. Fields once famously advised. He might have added flying cars. A pack of cute dogs, an even cuter pack of homegrown moppets and an anthropomorphic automobile all upstage their adult co-stars in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a fluffy stage version of the 1968 movie currently tooling through Toronto.

Adapted from Ian Fleming's children's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is James Bond for the kiddies. At the exhortations of his children Jeremy and Jemima, widower and inventor Caractacus Potts (a slightly distracted Steve Wilson, trying too hard to be Dick Van Dyke) purchases the rusted old hulk of a racing car from a junkyard and transforms it into the titular supercar.

The childlike, toy-loving Baron of Vulgaria gets wind of this spectacular motor vehicle and sends his spies to kidnap its creator, but they snatch Grandpa Potts instead. And so, the Potts family and candy-empire heiress Truly Scrumptious jump into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and set off to save him.

In the film, the Vulgarians are part of an elaborate fantasy sequence, a story told by Caractacus on a picnic; that never really made much sense, since the “real” portions of the film were equally fantastic.

Here, the Vulgarians appear from the very start in the form of bumbling spies Boris and Goran, the comic highlight of the play thanks to the vaudevillian performances of Stratford veteran Dirk Lumbard and his stubby sidekick Scott Cote.

The 1968 film's script has also been astutely altered to strengthen the female parts, making Truly Scrumptious (the charming and enthusiastic Kelly McCormick) less of a maiden-in-distress and transforming the children-hating Baroness (the saucy Elizabeth Ward Land) into the real power behind the Vulgarian throne rather than her simpleton husband (an over-the-top George Dvorsky). “I should never have allowed toys into the marriage,” the Baroness sighs, in a line that received a stunned silence from the Toronto Christmas Eve audience.

Chitty's sexism may be gone, but disappointingly, so are some of the other rough charms of the film, which was co-written by the gleefully grotesque children's author Roald Dahl. In Jeremy Sams's stage adaptation, Grandpa Potts no longer belittles his son, while the Baron is not scheming to murder his wife, making their ironic love duet Chu-Chi Face merely moronic.

The music is all by the prolific Sherman brothers, one of the most formidable songwriting teams of all time whose credits include Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book and The Aristocats. The pair – who have penned a handful of new songs for the stage show – are evil geniuses capable of writing simple songs that you may not particularly like, but which will never leave your head. Exhibit A: It's a Small World, for which they are currently standing trial at the Hague.

In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the tunes Truly Scrumptious, Me Ol' Bamboo (recycled from Mary Poppin's Step in Time) and the title song will stick in your sinuses like a winter cold. Pity about the repetitive, often inane lyrics. “Truly Scrumptious, you're truly, truly scrumptious” is not clever; it's a tautology. If the Sherman brothers ever wrote a musical version of A Christmas Carol, no doubt Bob Cratchit would croon, “Oh Mr Scrooge / he's such a scroogey-scroogey scrooge.”

After taking forever to get going, the stage musical (directed, believe it or not, by Adrian Noble, who helmed the fine Hamlet at Stratford this summer) then resolves any conflict overly quickly. At Truly Scrumptious's first encounter with her father, Jemima immediately declares that the two are in love rather than letting them battle it out a bit. At the end, the Vulgarians are summarily declared defeated by an off-stage Chitty.

The songs, on the other hand, drag on for much too long and almost all include unnecessary and unwelcome encore codas.

Oh, but the car flies. It may not soar over the crowd like it did on Broadway, but the machinery is much better hidden making this touring production seem more magical. Whether children really need to see a story about a family's love for their “fine four-fendered friend” is strictly up to parents and their personal views on the automobile sector bailout.

Continues at Toronto's Canon Theatre until Jan. 4.