Matilda the Musical review: Brilliantly British, Roald Dahl would be proud
Matilda the Musical review: An homage to the original 1990s film directed by Danny DeVito, Matilda the Musical justifies a revisit to these loveable characters by taking them home to Britain
Of course it should have always been British – Roald Dahl’s classic, Matilda, has had its inevitable remake and it replaces the white picket fences and impossibly wide suburban thoroughfares of America with…somewhere in Britain.
Also British is the film’s folklorean sensibility, examined through Sindhu Vee’s Mrs Phelps, a local librarian and ally of Matilda. Mrs Phelps lives in a caravan and hangs out with the titular lead as she recites stories in meadows and against the backdrop of rolling pastures. It’s Railway Children-esque in its innocence, and it feels as if this should have always been the filmic backdrop to Roald Dahl’s writing.
The formidable sight of Miss Trunchbull’s Victorian boarding school, the rain-drenched PE lessons and Matilda’s dryness and introversion also feel at home when they’re, well, at home in Britain.
Jenny Stevens as Matilda has a similar style to Mara Wilson’s first iteration though she finds different shades in the very intelligent little girl
Miss Trunchbull – played dazzingly by Pam Ferris in the original movie – was English so there’s no change there, but the other characters have been delightfully ‘Britished’. Matilda’s parents the Wormwoods, played by Stephen Graham and Ditzy Gene, are as memorably gaudy as the initial iconic creations by Danny De Vito and Rhea Perlman, but fans of the 90s film may find them pastichey, especially the mannerisms and ditzy glances of Jenny Southan who’s the spit of Perlman.
The bigger picture reveals an all-singing, all-dancing Matilda that rushes from one Tim Minchin-penned earworm to another, with compelling syncronised dances, especially impressive from the ensemble child cast. There’s no one stand-out song but two hours of pleasingly rhyming couplets, often placed against sumptuous panoramas of schoolchildren in the dining hall or playing in the playground. (Fans of the Olivier Award-winning Matilda the Musical will be at home: the songs are lifted from there.) Director Matthew Warchus isn’t shy with the formula, and the end result has to be commended for its sheer maximalist audacity: in a Baz Luhrmann kind of way.
Alisha Weir as Matilda has a similar style to Mara Wilson’s first iteration though she finds different shades in the very intelligent little girl. In an expanded script, her hopes and fears are taken seriously, and given more room for examination, which is something, given Wilson’s iteration still feels contemporary. It’s Emma Thompson who falters somewhat as Trunchbull. She looks the part, drained of life and with those red burst blood vessels in her cheeks, but somehow, stumbling around in the controversial fat suit, she isn’t as scary as Ferris’s version was.
Still, everything’s washed in the grit and misery of 1970s Britain, and you can almost imagine Dahl just out of sight, behind the camera, willing everyone on.
Matilda the Musical is in cinemas now and on Netflix
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