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Something shifted when Timothée Chalamet put on the coat and top hat that transformed him into a budding chocolatier in Paul King’s Wonka. That simple act has moved us collectively into a chaos-ridden timeline in which families can get ripped off at a knockoff Willy Wonka-themed family event in Glasgow — and in which John Stamos can record the opening number demo for Willy’s Candy Spectacular: A Parody Musical, a production entirely about that event.
The first introduction to the forthcoming production from Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner — set to run at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest at the Pleasance King Dome from Aug. 9 through 26 — is “Willy’s Candy Spectacular,” a nearly four-minute-long sonic and visual assault that credits the cash grab exhibit with kicking off the apocalypse. “We love musicals with epic opening numbers,” Zachary and Weiner said. “And we thought — what could be more epic than John Stamos singing about the end of humanity and linking our species’ demise to an underwhelming immersive experience in Scotland?”
“It was the start of the end of the world, but we didn’t know at the time/An immersive treat that was meant to be sweet would bring down all mankind/It was the start of the end of the world, its significance was easy to miss,” Stamos sings. “A scheme gone bad-turned-viral fad brought us to the apocalypse/Some thought it’d be Trump or Putin, setting the world ablaze/Some thought it’d be masks of Covid vaccinations that led to the end of days/But no, it was Willy’s Candy Spectacular.”
The original event, billed as “Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” was organized by Billy Coull and hosted in a warehouse that looked nothing like the lush, immersive experience it had been described as. For-hire actors were tasked with delivering an AI-generated script for an audience of parents and children who would go home with little more than jelly beans and scarred memories. The song digs into this, too.
“How, you may ask, did this underwhelming show lead to the Earth’s demise/Well, we don’t know, but if we retrace our steps an answer might arise/Let’s turn back the clock to a time long before we were smoldering ash/When some Scottish guy hatched a scheme to make some easy cash/And in a flash there was Willy’s Candy Spectacular,” Stamos laments. “Each parent and kid was out 35 quid at Willy’s Candy Spectacular/And from that day on, a disaster would spawn/Civilization was gone, thanks to not Willy Wonka, but Willy’s Candy Spectacular.”
In a statement, Stamos shared: “After playing Willy Wonka in concert at the Hollywood Bowl, I was happy to join in when that event’s director, Richard Kraft, asked me to record a demo of the opening number to his upcoming stage show, ‘Willy’s Candy Spectacular: A Parody Musical,’ spoofing the Wonka rip-off fiasco in Glasgow. Any opportunity to sing a batshit crazy song about The End of Days and to be pelted by candy is something to savor.”
