Theatre in Review: Matilda (Shubert Theatre)

	Photo: Joan Marcus

It's safe to say you've never seen anything quite like Matilda, the weirdly charming and charmingly weird new musical that opened last week to the kinds of critical hosannas previously bestowed only on the likes of The Producers and The Book of Mormon. The reviews are correct -- up to a point. The show's creators, obviously motivated by passion for their source material, get points for giving a fresh spin to the book-musical format even as they effectively translate the wild, strange sensibility of Roald Dahl to the stage. And given the fact that Broadway musicals are increasingly pitched at the preteen market, its long-term popularity seems guaranteed. It is a peculiar entertainment in more than one way, however, which enthralls only intermittently.

Adapted by Dennis Kelly from Dahl's comic horror story of the same name, Matilda is the tale of a tiny genius whose life is a living hell filled with cartoon devils. Barely old enough for the first grade, Matilda Wormwood is already devouring the likes of A Tale of Two Cities and the novels of Dostoevsky. (At a crucial moment, she will reveal her fluency in Russian -- self-taught, of course.) But her gifts are not appreciated; her father is an oleaginous, spindly legged con man; her mother is a mental vacuum topped by a mass of bleached blonde ringlets, obsessed with competition ballroom dancing; and her brother is a teenage Neanderthal who speaks only in monosyllables. All are horrified by Matilda's precocious literacy; whenever one of them catches her with a book, they collectively react as if the poor little thing had staggered in with gin on her breath. (Reading, Mr. Wormwood insists, gives children "head lice of the soul.") Piling cruelty on cruelty, Matilda is enrolled at Crunchen Hall, a Dickensian house of horrors presided over by the bizarre and vindictive Mrs. Trunchbull, a former Olympic-level thrower who keeps in shape by occasionally hurling a recalcitrant student into the air -- that is, when she isn't sending her victims off to the airless prison known as "chokey."

The action of Matilda, which is pretty thin in the plot department, involves the little girl's growing friendship with Miss Honey, her sweet, but pathologically shy, teacher, while Miss Trunchbull hovers around them, waiting to strike. Filling out the sometimes poky action is a subplot about Mr. Wormwood's disastrous attempts at selling used cars to some sinister Russians, and a story about the love of an escapologist and an acrobat, which Matilda spins for Mrs. Phelps, a public librarian; the story proves to have profound consequences, for reasons I must not reveal, but it is the key to Matilda's eventual triumph over a world of vicious adults.

At its best, Matthew Warchus' production creates Matilda's anarchic, often threatening world and its gallery of grotesques with considerable panache. Leading the way is Miss Trunchbull, played by a male actor, Bertie Carvel. Dressed by production designer Rob Howell in a brown leather skirt and jacket that looks like the girly version of an SS Waffen uniform, her hair pulled back in a knot, her spine curved à la Richard III, Carvel minces around the stage, handing out draconian punishments in a genteel falsetto laced with menace. Carvel's Trunchbull is quite a creation, a cartoon monster right out of Ronald Searle's St. Trinian's series, no more so than when terrorizing her charges in a production number titled "The Smell of Rebellion." Equally accomplished is Gabriel Ebert as Mr. Wormwood, his beanpole frame wrapped in a hideous green plaid suit, his head topped by a hedgerow of thick brown hair. Stepping around the stage in an angular hopping motion, he looks like he's crossing a bed of hot coals. (In moments of fury, he inevitably calls Matilda "boy," a running gag that quickly wears out its welcome.) Lesli Margherita makes a most suitably unsuitable wife and mother as Mrs. Wormwood, asking, "Do I look fat?" in anguished tones (she is nine months pregnant at the time), and selling her big number, "Loud" -- a ballroom dance interlude with Rudolpho (Phillip Spaeth), her ersatz Italian dance partner -- with considerable verve.

With all these comic monsters running amok, it can't be easy for the actress cast as plain, withdrawn Miss Honey to make an impression, but Lauren Ward gives the character a real warmth that proves especially helpful when striking a bond with Matilda (played with eerie self-possession and a welcome hint of vulnerability by Oona Laurence at the performance I attended.) There's also nice work from Karen Aldridge as Mrs. Phelps, who all but hyperventilates over Matilda's story-telling prowess. It's not their fault that Matilda prefers unalloyed and highly creative evil over generically depicted goodness.

Making its own unique contribution is Rob Howell's production design, which covers the proscenium with Scrabble tiles in different colors and fonts, a clever allusion to Matilda's way with words; a series of light boxes fly in to spell out Matilda's name. Other amusing set pieces include the forbidding gate of Crunchen Hall and Miss Trunchbull's office, a command center from which she keeps tabs on her students with a battery of video screens. Hugh Vanstone's lighting provides a series of candy-colored washes that instantly turn cold white when the action turns sinister; he also provides a stunning laser effect at the climax, when Matilda's sudden and rather convenient acquisition of telekinetic powers results in a series of special effects by Paul Kieve. (The best of these is the chalkboard that writes without human assistance, dredging up a dark secret from Miss Trunchbull's past.) Thanks to Simon Baker's tip-top sound design, Tim Minchin's intricate lyrics are made thoroughly intelligible without harrowing the audience's ears.

Minchin is best-known as a cheeky cabaret artist, which explains why the score of Matilda at times seems more like a collection of specialty material rather than a fully thought-through score. "Naughty," Matilda's anthem of self-assertion, with a melody reminiscent of '60s-era Brit pop, kicks things off on the right jaunty note. Oddly, however, it is preceded by throwaway number, "Miracle," featuring a chorus of bratty children and their clueless, adoring parents. It's a strange choice, expressing a point of view that is immediately abandoned. Are these the same people who send their kids off to be tortured by Miss Trunchbull, the Captain Bligh of headmistresses? The big Crunchen Hall numbers, including "The Smell of Rebellion" and "Revolting Children," are more overbearing than funny, and Miss Honey's songs, "Pathetic" and "This Little Girl," are, like her, a little underpowered. Some of the best numbers have little or nothing to do with the story, especially "Telly," an amusing and rousing Act II curtain raiser that is Mr. Wormword's ode to his favorite pastime. ("The bigger the telly, the smarter the man," he asserts, with dubious certainty.) This is immediately followed by "When I Grow Up," a lovely and faintly melancholy reverie, sung by the Crunchen Hall student body, many of them on swings. (It's a simple, inventive bit of staging by Peter Darling, whose choreography, mostly for the children, tends toward repeated robotic movements and stylized expressions of helpless rage; he also comes up with some riotously steamy ballroom moves for Mrs. Wormwood and Rudolpho.)

Still, even allowing for the considerable talent and craft that has been expended on Matilda, Dahl's story is a novel for the 9-to-11 set -- there's only so much that can be added to capture the interest of the adults in the audience -- and two-and-a-half hours is a very long time for what is essentially a cartoon. This explains why Kelly's libretto so often marks time, repeating adult atrocities while waiting for the worm to turn. If I characterize Matilda as the best children's theatre you've ever seen, it's at least as much a comment on the current Broadway musical scene, which this season has surprisingly little to offer anyone over the age of 12. Still, anyone with a smart kid or two will find Matilda fairly irresistible; overpraised or not, all signs point to a monster hit.--David Barbour