The four Charlies of Brisbane's Chocolate Factory (Opens 18 March)

Oliver De Los Santos (10 years old, from Wishart), Phineaus Knickerbocker (12, Mackenzie), Cooper Matthews (10, Paddington) and Flynn Nowlan (12, Nerang) will share the role of Charlie Bucket in the Brisbane run of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Charlie lives with his mother and his four grandparents in a little wooden house near a great town, and is the final child to find a Golden Ticket. Willy Wonka, the most amazing, fantastic, extraordinary chocolate maker the world has ever seen, is played by Paul Slade Smith, who was been nominated as Best Actor in a Musical at this year’s Helpmann Awards.

Slade Smith was part of the original Broadway cast of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, appearing as Grandpa George, then appeared in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center. Previously he performed in Finding Neverland on Broadway, and took over the roles of Charles Frohman and Captain Hook from Kelsey Grammer. He has also appeared in Wicked as Doctor Dillamond and The Phantom of the Opera.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is perhaps Roald Dahl’s best-known story and has proved to be one of the most enduring children’s books of all time. The story of Charlie Bucket, the five Golden Tickets, the Oompa-Loompas and the amazing Willy Wonka has become firmly embedded in our culture since it was first published in 1964. Conservative estimates suggest the original book has sold over 20 million copies worldwide; it is now available in 61 languages.

Roald Dahl began working on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1961, but its origins can be traced all the way back to Dahl’s own childhood. In his autobiography, Boy, he tells us how, while at school in England, he and his fellow Repton students were engaged as ‘taste testers’ for a chocolate company – something that seems to have started him thinking about chocolate factories and inventing rooms long before Mr Wonka was on the scene. But when he came to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the story went through several drafts until the story as we now know it was released in 1964.