YMMV / The Golden Ticket

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Critic James L. Paulk's review of the Atlanta Opera's staging for ArtsAtl.com was fairly positive. But it pointed out that this show effectively has an alienating premise and execution: Adults who love opera would likely find an adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory too kiddy, while kids wouldn't appreciate the many musical jokes referencing adult operas and styles in the score and find proceedings too slow-going. (That much of the book's snarkier humor is absent, or loses a lot of its impact when sung in this manner, doesn't help.) The result, according to Paulk, was a show that didn't sell a lot of tickets and had many families leaving at intermission — which is to say, kids didn't want to stick around for the actual tour of the factory! He also thought the show was too long for said kids at 2 and 1/2 hours with intermission — interesting in light of the success of the 2013 stage musical adaptation, which has a similar runtime but not the same problem with kids getting bored...

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