Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, also known as Chitty the Musical, is a stage musical based on the 1968 film produced by Cubby Broccoli. It was launched at the London Palladium theatre on April 16, 2002 with six new songs by the Sherman Brothers who wrote the original academy award nominated title and song score as well. This hugely successful London production directed by Adrian Noble with musical staging and choreography by Gillian Lynne closed in September 2005.
A Broadway production opened on April 28, 2005 at the Hilton Theatre in New York City, garnering good reviews only for the lavish sets (Ben Brantley in the New York Times of April 29, 2005, noted that the show "naggingly recalls the cold, futurist milieus of movies like 'Modern Times' and 'Metropolis,' in which machines rule the universe" and featured songs that sounded "not unlike what you might hear in sing-along hour in a pre-K class"). It was nominated for, but did not win, the following 2005 Tony Awards:
The Broadway production closed on December 31, 2005 after 34 previews and 284 regular performances, losing its entire financial investment.
Since closing in London, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has been touring around the UK, stopping in Sunderland (9th December 2005- 4th March 2006), Manchester (20th March 2006- 10th June 2006), Birmingham (23rd June 2006- 2nd September 2006), Liverpool (18th September 2006- 18th November 2006), Edinburgh (1st December 2006- 24th February 2007), Bristol (9th March 2007- 9th June 2007) and Southampton (25th June- 15th September 2007).
The musical will be staged in Asia for the first time when it opens on 2 November 2007 in Singapore's Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay. Encouraging ticket sales resulted in an extension of the show to 9 December , adding 24 more shows to a run which was originally planned to end on 18 November 2007.
