Chitty Chitty Bang Bang-Watermill Theatre Newbury.

One of the most well-known family musicals flies into The Watermill Theatre until 13th September 2026. The grounds have been themed around the musical with a vintage car for you to be photographed in, a few fairground type games, and a massive circus tent that all becomes clear during act one.

The charm and compact auditorium of The Watermill Theatre gives this family musical more intimacy. You feel part of the storyline and can see fairly close up the mechanics of this famous flying car.

Christian Edwards plays the lead role of Caractacus Potts alongside Auora Breslin and Francis Adams in the roles of the Potts children Jemima and Jeremy in last night’s performance and were both absolutely brilliant and appeared to be enjoying themselves.

The musical sticks to the original storyline with familiar characters from Truly Scrumptious (Lydia Louise), The Childcatcher (Susannah Van Den Berg), Toymaker (Reuben Greeph) and Baron and Baroness Bomburst (Samuel Morgan-Grahame and Mairi Ikegami).

However, the comedy double act from Vulgaria Boris (Sam Pay) and Goran (Alexander Zane) deserve a special mention especially as there were a couple of technical issues and they engaged with the audience and deflected away the minor hold up. Which didn’t stop the enjoyment of the evening in any way.

Set and costume designer Katie Lias has a keen eye with attention to detail when recreating the workshop of the inventer Caractacus. I especially liked the blueprint posters on the wall depicting some of his inventions. Anyone familiar with the Watermill will know that the stage area is limited in size.

The puppetry dog pack created by Marc Parrett added a lovely charm to the play. At one point, the stage is almost full of them getting up to different antics and winning over the audience.

Once again, the Watermill Theatre exceeds itself and shows why it was chosen by The Stage as the winner of the “Theatre of the Year” award.