The writings of Roald Dahl are among the most adored of modern children’s literature, with many of his books going on to inspire screen adaptations beloved by audiences of all ages. With his undeniable sense of whimsical wordplay and a mature perspective on seemingly childish subject matters, Dahl often captures the intensified manner in which children experience the bustling world around them with an earnestness that allows his young characters to feel like the beautifully complex and delicately imperfect creatures they truly are.
Dahl’s 1988 novel Matilda was first adapted into a 1996 film directed by Danny DeVito. While commercially unsuccessful at first, it later became a cult favorite for many kids in the ‘90s thanks to an infectiously charming leading performance from Mara Wilson. Fifteen years later, a stage musical adaptation of Matilda opened on the West End, where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical and is still in performances over a decade later. Matilda The Musical has since traveled to 91 cities, won 99 international awards, and been seen by over 11 million people worldwide. Many members of the musical’s original creative team now bring their work to the screen, inviting a new generation of “revolting children” to be spellbound by the imagination of Roald Dahl and the brilliant mind of a little girl called Matilda.
Matilda Wormwood (Alisha Weir) is a precocious child with a knack for absorbing books far more advanced than those read by anyone else her age: “A precocious child is one that shows amazing intelligence early on.” She lives with her dimwitted parents (Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Graham), revolting against their disdain for having a daughter by playing amusing pranks on them in spite of their neglect and insistence that they would be better off without her. When Matilda is forced to attend Crunchem Hall, she quickly becomes the source of targeted torment from the school’s evil headmistress and former Olympic hammer-throwing champion, Agatha Trunchbull (Emma Thompson). However, Matilda makes a new friend in her sunshiny teacher, Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch), who is also in need of a little light of her own.
In an uncommon move for stage-to-screen adaptations, the director of the original stage production, Matthew Warchus, returns to helm the musical film. This consistency in creative leadership allows for an expertise in the material from its early stages of development that translates to the screen with clear storytelling intention and imaginative vision, even if the filmmaking sometimes feels erratically shot or overedited, and the screenplay sometimes takes our previous knowledge of this story for granted. Warchus’ direction instead excels through a cohesive visual and performance style that is often quaint and always idiosyncratic enough to elevate the musical form. The visual world of Matilda balances a strong juxtaposition between the kaleidoscopic mashup of the mid-twentieth century tackiness that colors the home of Matilda’s parents and the dreary earth tones, dictator-like statues, and jail bars of Crunchem Hall. Like a supreme overlord of order and discipline, Miss Trunchbull surveys the campus from her surveillance-systemed watchtower, punishes with a torture device known as “The Chokey,” and teaches a physical education class that bears a striking similarity to the boot camp sequences from Full Metal Jacket.
Composer and lyricist Tim Minchin cleverly incorporates Roald Dahl’s rhythmic playfulness and witty use of language into the vocabulary of the musical world to further express the heightened sensibilities of the characters. An early song introducing the rules of Crunchem Hall incorporates each letter of the alphabet phonetically into the lyrics of the song in sequential order: “So you think you’re A-ble to survive this mess by B-eing a prince or a princess” and so on, all the way through the letter Z. The scholarly approach required to internalize these lyrics is elevated by Warchus’ crafty visual choice of progressing deeper into the trenches of the school while hitting different signage of each letter as it occurs in the song, becoming a game of alphabetical “I spy.” Other moments of clever musical staging include an opening number sung by newborn babies in crib closeups, a school cafeteria that transforms into a collection of circular revolving stages, and a song where Matilda glides through the sky in a hot air balloon while experiencing the escapist serenity of getting lost in her imagination. There is also one new song written by Minchin for the screen adaptation – a movie musical trend that often feels like a futile attempt to win a “Best Original Song” Academy Award – that manages to provide a proper finale that maintains the sentiment of the original stage ending while also improving upon it from a musical perspective.
Many of the most moving moments in the film are found in the relationship formed between Matilda and Miss Honey and the honest performances of the actresses playing each. In the song “My House,” Lashana Lynch conveys emotion through song as well as any seasoned stage performer, conjuring some well-earned tears from anyone in the audience who knows what it feels like to force oneself to stay optimistic in the face of loneliness and uncertainty. Emma Thompson also commands appreciation as the over-the-top villain whose speech and physical affectation teeters on camp without ever crossing the line past plausibility within this exaggerated world. Rounding out the cast includes an exhilarating ensemble of children who skillfully execute Ellen Kane’s emphatically energized choreography while filling the world of childhood innocence with specificity and empathy.
It’s refreshing to see a story that encourages disobedience in children. Part of the brilliance of Dahl’s Matilda is that its morals are so black and white that the conflict in the narrative comes not from deciphering right from wrong but instead from the tension of whether these characters will summon enough inner strength to stand up for what they know is right even if it means putting themselves at risk. In its own fantastical way, Matilda uses the power of knowledge to dismantle unjust systems that would otherwise go unchallenged by emboldening children to form their own opinions, recognize the abuse of power, and find the courage to speak against it.
As Roald Dahl wrote in his novel: “Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.” Warchus, Minchin, and the entire company of Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical seem to believe that the emotional resonance of the musical form is enough to get us one step closer to finding it.
