When it costs around $500 for a family of four to take in a Broadway Musical in not particularly good seats, is it too much to expect you be able to actually hear it? You couldn’t hear patches of “Matilda” on Tuesday evening. This is a show that grossed $1,078,021 for the week ending December 21st, in its 80th week on Broadway , and you couldn’t follow the plot because the sweet young eight year old girl playing Matilda, with huge swaths of dialogue and lyric to remember, couldn’t be heard from the seats in the Mezzanine.
The result? An entire subplot of Matilda telling a story to the librarian, which ties up (messily)at the end, was unintelligible. we were left guessing if we hadn’t read the book. How is it possible that this overly hyped production by the Royal Shakespeare Production got so many raves when it opened in April, 2013? Was it good and we couldn’t tell?
1. It is based on a Roald Dahl rethinking of “Nicholas Nickleby” with Smike recast as the five year old Matilda.
2. Everybody sings in a British accent.
3. Bertie Carvel’s star turn as the hideous headmistress Miss Trunchball turned heads (he isn’t with the show any more)
4. Cmon, it’s the Royal Shakespeare Company. What did you expect, the Really Useful Company?
Unfortunately, 20 months later and if there was anything as spectacular as to justify Ben Brantley’s astonishing overreaction in the New York Times (“…the most satisfying and subversive musical ever to come out of Britain, where it was nurtured into life by the Royal Shakespeare Company. In many ways this production would seem to be an example of show business as usual… in its melding of song, dance and story it’s as classic as “Oklahoma!”) it does not exist now.
The musical is based upon Roald Dahl’s children’s book “Matilda” . Dahl, the British novelist who died in 1990, two years after the book was published, was a modern day Grimms Brother or Hans Christian Anderson,who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty in childhood psychological trauma. His “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was the template for “Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory” -you remember, when a dozen children are dismembered and sent on their way? The man was Hansel And Gretal mean and the best thing about the musical is the use of Dahl’s hysterical put downs as dialogue, Miss Turnball’s verbal assault on Matilda (last name Wormwood -like the infamous English penitiary Wormwood Scrubs no doubt) is repeated verbatim: “Stand up, you disgusting little coackroach. You filithy little maggot! You are a vile, repellent, malicious little brute.” With a villain that villainous you would think the musical would be a lot more vehement.
Matilda’s parents, a used car salesman and a ballroom dancer, dote on her television addled big brother while treating the five year old gifted child with nothing but contempt. Matilda spends her days telling tall tales to the town librarian before being sent to the misopedist Trumnwell’s school, where new teacher Miss Honey (really, Dahl, were you having an off day?) is bullied into submission. Finally, lead by Matilda the children revolt in a mini Carrie meets Les Miz.
The problem here is it isn’t very scary, the parents aren’t that bad… they don’t beat her, Miss Trumbell’s idea of punishment is, pulling the kids ears and sticking em in “chokey” (aka detention). Smike would have considered chokey a luxury. All of which they could vaguely get away with except the stage is nothing much (again, THEY ARE RAKING IN A MILLION BUCKS A WEEK, they couldnt afford a fun stage?) and the book by Dennis Kelly isn’t clear enough and the music and lyric by Tim Minchin -this is his first musical, is worse. The entire cast is good without being great, Christopher Seiber as Miss Trunchbull is good without being great, Eliza Holland Madore is a fine trooper thrown in the deep end, Matt Harrington is irritating as Matilda’s father -I mean more irritating than he is meant to be and Lesli Margherita is better than she has any right to be as his wife. Alison Luff is born to be bland as Miss Honey but this bland? It is a musical without a star turn, and while it is meant to not have a star (I can’t imagine anybody not going to the show because one of the performers weren’t playing that day -except for their immediate family), it should have something to cling on to.
The entire show revolves around the great song “Naughty” and I asked my companion, my twelve year old Great Niece Juliet, who seemed to find the proceedings as bland as I did (her Mom took a nap), what she could hear of the song, replied “Something about being little” . Now that is sad. The musical’s punchline is much less the power of story telling and much more the power of this songs and oft repeated conclusion: “It’s not right”. For her and for you I will reprint the lyric and post the song.
Grade: C
Jack and Jill, went up the hill
To fetch a Pail of water,so they say
Their subsequent fall was inevitable
They never stood a chance, they were written that way
Innocent victims of their story
Like Romeo and Juliet
T’was written in the stars before they even met
That’s love and fate, and a touch of stupidity
Would rob them of their hope of living happily
The endings are often a little bit gory
I wonder why they didn’t just change their story?
We’re told we have to do what we’re told but surely
Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty.
Just because you find that life’s not fair it
Doesn’t mean that you just have to grin and bear it
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
Nothing will change.
Even if you’re little, you can do a lot, you
Mustn’t let a little thing like, ‘little’ stop you
If you sit around and let them get on top, you
Might as well be saying
You think that it’s okay
And that’s not right!
Cinderella, in the cellar,
Didn’t have to do much as far as I could tell.
Her Godmother was two-thirds fairy,
Suddenly her lot, was a lot less scary,
But what if you haven’t got a fairy to fix it?
Sometimes you have to make a little bit of mischief.
Just because you find that life’s not fair it
Doesn’t mean that you just have to grin and bare it
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
Nothing will change.
Even if you’re little, you can do a lot, you
Mustn’t let a little thing like, ‘little’ stop you
If you sit around and let them get on top, you
Might as well be saying
You think that it’s okay
And that’s not right!
And if it’s not right!
You have to put it right!
In the slip of a bolt, there’s a tiny revolt.
The seeds of a war in the creak of a floorboard.
A storm can begin, with the flap of a wing.
The tiniest mite packs the mightiest sting!
Every day, starts with the tick of a clock.
All escapes, start with the click of a lock!
If you’re stuck in your story and want to get out
You don’t have to cry, you don’t have to shout!
‘Cause if you’re little you can do a lot, you
Mustn’t let a little thing like, ‘little’ stop you
If you sit around and let them get on top, you
Won’t change a thing!
Just because you find that life’s not fair, it
Doesn’t mean that you just have to grin and bare it!
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
You might as well be saying
You think that it’s okay
And that’s not right!
And if it’s not right!
You have to put it right!
But nobody else is gonna put it right for me
nobody but me is gonna change my story
sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty
