By Christopher Graham
Divine Comedy, BYU?s premiere sketch comedy troupe, will take the summer release ?Charley and the Chocolate Factory,? blend it with the LDS film ?Charly,? and add a pinch of their satiric humor to make a complete comic confection.
The end result is ?Charly and the Creamery on Ninth,? the latest in the group?s series of movie parodies that headline their shows will be performed Friday and Saturday in the Tanner Building. This skit will be the group?s first performance since they replaced more than half of their cast over the summer.
Along with ?Charly,? the new story will take equal parts from both the older and the newer versions of ?Chocolate Factory? and will follow the traditional approach of Divine Comedy by spoofing BYU and Mormon culture.
Taylor Johnson, who plays the lead character Charly and also shares some of her spunk, said their new skit will be funny because their audiences can understand the humor, whether they be BYU students or not. She said the success of Divine Comedy has been its understanding of BYU culture.
?We all go to BYU and we all know about its quirks,? Johnson said. ?That?s what Divine Comedy is all about: BYU quirks and trying to figure out why it''s so weird here.?
Many new personalities and fresh ideas are surfacing because of the new people who have joined the cast, and these improvements will be seen in the upcoming show, Johnson said.
?Nothing will be carried over from previous years and I think there is a lot of subtle humor in this new show,? Johnson said. ?I think it will be funny all around, even if you haven?t seen either of the two films we?re basing the skit on.?
The skit will also feature musical parodies of the songs in ?Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? sung by the Oompa Loompas.
Rex Phillips, an electrical engineering major who works as the show?s stage manager, said the show would also continue to incorporate technology to make the show better. He said extensive power point slides would be used to bring the show closer to the look of the movies. All these ingredients will be mixed together in an effort to satisfy BYU?s comedic sweet tooth.
Ryan Croker, a graduate in history from BYU, helped to write the script for ?Charly and the Creamery on Ninth? and said his challenge in writing the script was finding a movie that people are familiar with and interested in and then putting it in a different context. Croker has helped on other Divine Comedy skits such as ?The Bubble,? ?Phantom of the HFAC? and ?DTR Wars.?
?We?ve been working on this script since May and it''s fun to see something I?ve helped write finally be performed,? Croker said.
Tickets for the show are on sale at the Wilkinson Center Information Desk and cost $5.