WOKE theatre chiefs have made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s lead role female.
Producers have cast two young actresses as Charlie Bucket in a musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story.
Jessie-Lou Harvie and Amelia Minto will alternate with lads Isaac Sugden and Noah Walton as the boy who finds a golden ticket for a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory in a choc bar.
The move by Playful Productions has baffled some audience members of the show, which is touring the UK.
One at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, where it is now playing, said: “I was stunned to see Charlie is now a girl?
From tongue scraping to saying no, here are 12 health trends to try in 2023
“Why change something that was not broken?”
It follows publisher Puffin’s decision to issue rewritten versions of Dahl’s classics without “offensive” content.
In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Augustus Gloop is now “enormous”, not “fat”.
In The Twits, Mrs Twit is “beastly”, not “ugly and beastly”. The original versions are still available.
A source said: “As if re-writing Dahl wasn’t bad enough, theatre producers now want to re-gender his characters.
“It just confuses the audience. The story is a classic and has nothing to do with gender so it just seems like change for the sake of being woke.
“Dahl’s stories and characters were genius. Viewers don’t want or need them to be altered.”
The Wales Millennium Centre refers to Charlie as “he”.
Producers of the show, on the website for which 15 of the 28-strong cast have a preferred pronoun beside their name, were contacted for comment.