Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty…

I fear I’m well past the tipping point of being annoying or a stuck record about how much I love the staged musical version of Roald Dahl’s timeless story Matilda. We saw it at the RSC in Stratford last Christmas and it wowed me completely. Now it’s wowing the London theatre crowds, has already won some awards and is lined up to win many more.

We went to see it again last weekend, and if anything I enjoyed it even more. The breathtaking surprise and excitement was of course slightly changed, but the exhiliration, joy and range of emotional reactions were (if anything) even more intense. We bought the soundtrack CD, and have listened to it pretty much every day since. Even my favourite podcasts have taken second place.

It seems that my reactions to Tim Minchin’s amazing songs, combined with the memories of the performance, are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. More than any film, this show triggers emotional responses in me: I laugh at Bertie Carvel’s astonishing Miss Trunchbull, I weep on cue to the opening bars of “When I Grow Up”, I try desperately to keep up with the wordplay in “The School Song” and “The Smell of Rebellion”. This reaction (I’d go again next week if I could) has been threatening to take over. I sing the songs out loud / under my breath at work.

Right now I can’t imagine not seeing it again, and it made me think last night that I would need to rewrite my entire selection for my Desert Island Discs… But I managed to extract myself from that thorny problem. Of course, I would make Matilda my luxury; a filmed version of the live performance with the original cast. This would make my life on the island much more bearable, as it would remind me of two of the best experiences I have had with my family, of the joy and innocence and wonder and naughtiness of being a child, of the importance of nurturing and inspiring children, and of the excitement and joy I share with my children as we all sing along to and re-enact the whole drama…

I’d love to post the whole show here, but as I’m urging you to see it, I am torn in not wanting to reveal spoilers, jokes and surprises. The opening song “Miracle” satirises the attitudes of many parents towards their own ‘miracle’ children, while at the same time wholly celebrating the wondrous miracle that life and children represent. And it throws us headlong into the intricate and brilliant wordplay of Tim Minchin and Roald Dahl, which keeps coming back, and is a constant source of pleasure throughout the show…

One can hardly move for beauty and brilliance these days,
It seems that there are millions of these one-in-a-millions these days.
“Specialness” seems de rigeur,
Above-average is average, go figeur.
Is it some modern miracle of calculus that such frequent miracles
don’t render each one unmiraculous?

Matilda’s first song is at once heart-rending and joyous. Despite the (mostly comic) horrors of her family life, she is defiant and positive…

We’re told we have to do what we’re told, but surely sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty…

And then we meet The Trunchbull, English Hammer-throwing Champion (1969).

If you want to throw the hammer for your country you have to stay inside the circle all the time.
And if you want to make the team, you don’t need happiness or self-esteem,
You just need to keep your feet inside the line.

Matilda’s parents are brilliantly realised by Josie Walker and Paul Kaye, who both get their own showpiece songs. Mrs Wormwood rebuffs the timid Miss Honey’s earnest intentions about Matilda’s academic talents…

What you know matters less than the volume with which what you don’t know’s expressed.
Content has never been less important, so you have got to be
LOUD …
…it really doesn’t matter if you don’t know nowt, as long as you don’t know it with a bit of clout.

…while Mr Wormwood, in a terrific ‘interval announcement’, celebrates his much-loved “Telly” and rejects Matilda’s books…

Jane Austen, in the compostin’!

The heart of the musical for me is the start of the second half, with the beautiful “When I Grow Up”, whose simple melodies and gorgeous words are complemented by the children swinging across the stage and over the audience.

When I grow up I will eat sweets every day on the way to work and I will go to bed late every night.
And I will wake up when the sun comes up and I will watch cartoons until my eyes go square
And I won’t care ‘cos I’ll be all grown up.

...I will be strong enough to carry all the heavy things you have to haul around with you when you're a grown-up...

I’ll avoid most of the rest of the second half, as the action and surprises are too important to give away. But as it all builds towards a triumphant ending, the oppressed children revolt against The Trunchbull in a riotous finale…

We’ll find out where the chalk is stored and draw rude pictures on the board!
It’s not insulting, we’re revolting!

I’ll try not to keep going on about how fabulous this show is. But I can scarcely remember having such a reaction to anything in a long, long time.

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My Mummy says I’m a Miracle…

I’ve posted before about my love of Roald Dahl. He wrote brillantly about what it is to be a child, free to explore and discover, free to experience shocks, frights, and bad things, free to be naughty, free to learn, free to be. Many of his characters have to overcome huge difficulties and dangers that are almost always thrown in their way by adults; adults who often pose both a physical and emotional threat, often a real danger.

Matilda Wormwood is no exception. She’s a child ignored and humiliated by her parents, and placed in a school-cum-prison ruled by the tyrannical Miss Trunchbull. She’s a child with exceptional talents, spotted by the sweet and nurturing Miss Honey, but if only she knew how to use them…

The musical adaptation by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin, staged by the RSC, is astonishing. It’s wonderfully faithful to the spirit of Roald Dahl, in fact I’d venture to say Mr Dahl would love the darkness, cleverness and tremendous emotional scope of the musical adaptation.  Perhaps controversially, I reckon Matilda – A Musical improves on the original book.

Photo courtesy of rsc.org.uk

The production is breathtaking. Matthew Warcus directs with the assured authority of a stage veteran, but every element is fantastic. The pace almost never lets up, and the transformations from The Wormwood’s front room to the school playground or classroom to Matilda’s bedroom to the library are effortless. The lighting, sound design, and use of the stage is simply wonderful, making the show a visual treat.

The performances are uniformly excellent. More than half the cast are children, with three cast in each part. We saw Adrianna Bertola in the title role: her stage presence, confidence and emotional range is almost mind-blowing. Many of the children attend Theatre Schools and I had to keep muttering to myself ‘please don’t let them end up on X-Factor’… All the children get comic moments of their own and they’re all great.

Adults in Dahl books are often grotesque, but here they’re all played with wonderful humour and stay the right side of caricature. Paul Kaye and Josie Waller excel as Matilda’s parents, bringing slapstick straight out of the novel to life.

Spoiler / Practical tip… if you do see this make sure you’re in your seat for the second half with plenty of time, as Mr Wormwood makes an ‘interval announcement’ that uses Paul Kaye’s stand-up comedic talents to the full…

Lauren Ward is a near-perfect Miss Honey as she emerges from her own troubled existence as the ideal, indeed only partner for Matilda. However, if it’s possible to steal this show, Bertie Carvel does with his portrayal of Miss Trunchbull. Grotesque, comic, genuinely terrifying (my 5 year-old knows and loves the story but did not like her!), he’s a joy to watch.

Photo taken from http://www.guardian.co.uk

The songs are all written by Tim Minchin, best known for his often very barbed, adult-themed material. This performance on the Jonathan Ross Show gives you an idea. He’s (IMHO) insanely talented, but not necessarily an obvious choice for a family musical, with his complex lyrics, rhymes and themes. Until you stop and think for a moment about Roald Dahl – wordplay almost beyond compare, larger-than-life characters, often surreal plots.

The music is outstanding, there isn’t a weak song in the show. The orchestrations are witty. The children more than cope with his demands: the opening number ‘Miracle’ features them in a fairly open attack on parental attitudes to ‘their special little soldiers’, where it becomes ‘de rigeur for miracles these days’. I wonder how the actual parents of these wonderfully talented children felt on seeing the song for the first time…

Ensemble pieces like ‘School Song’, ‘Bruce’, ‘When I Grow Up’ and ‘Revolting Children’ are fantastically intricate, but performed and staged in inspiring style. Lauren Ward has lovely songs in ‘This Little Girl’ and ‘My House’ that are beautifully moving. In ‘The Smell of Rebellion’ Bertie Carvel imbues Miss Trunchbull with at least a little of the spirit of Frank N Furter… And Matilda has three solo songs of her own, of which ‘I’m Here’ had this Father in absolute pieces (more of which later).

The Dahl book has a number of key scenes and set-pieces that simply must be in any adaptation. They’re almost all hyper-real, much easier to write than stage, but they’re all pulled off brilliantly. Mr Wormwood’s hair, the pigtail hammer-throw, Bruce Bogtrotter’s cake, moving the cup, the writing on the board are all there and their magic simply adds to the joy of the show. But Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin have added details and devices, and used songs to improve on the original book. Rudolpho is a new character with only a couple of appearances, but he helps contrast the loud chaos of the Wormwood household with Matilda’s own inner Quiet. The staging brings the spirit of the novel to life wonderfully, Miss Honey’s song ‘Pathetic’ is a fantastic introduction to her own personal turmoil and Miss Trunchbull’s past as a Hammer Thrower comes alive in her first scene, and her monstrosity with the chilling line ‘I’ve been busy’ (you’ll know what I mean).

Best of all for me is the way Miss Honey and Matilda’s stories are intertwined with the tale of The Escapologist and The Acrobat throughout the show. This had me in tears more than once, and is a wonderful adaptation that also includes a beautiful puppetry sequence.

Matilda is about the importance of loving your child, about the importance of children and how adults often neglect, misunderstand and mistreat them. It’s brought to life in so many wonderful ways in this musical through every element of the production. The Courtyard Theatre in Stratford is the perfect venue for the show, but this show deserves to run and run and run. Dahl should be pretty much compulsary reading in every school and home, and this production deserves to be a compulsary supplement to the books. If I never see another show this will live with me forever.

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Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it…

I learnt earlier this week that there is a Roald Dahl Day, every year on the anniversary of his birth on 13th September. And, for a few brief hours on Twitter, it appeared that people all over the world were celebrating his wonderful storytelling and magical imagination.

My eldest daughter is 8, and has read, listened to or watched pretty much everything Roald Dahl has written for children. She revisits them endlessly. What inspires and excites me about Roald Dahl’s writing is that (like Pixar films) the creativity, stories, characters, prose and dialogue always seem fresh, funny, interesting every time. They’re simply much better than most children’s fiction.

They’re much better because, on the one hand, the stories are often simple and easy to understand…

• Danny lives a bohemian existence with his Dad, who shows him all sorts of wonderful tricks and adventures
• Charlie wins a competition and experiences a fantastical trip through a chocolate factory unlike anywhere else
• Matilda is ignored by her parents but inspired by her teacher to discover her natural talent
• George is left alone with his tyrannical Grandmother, and plays a trick on her…

But at the same time, the stories are often dark, full of real threat and danger to the main characters, and there are some brilliant villains who are genuinely nasty. There’s an underlying depth to the writing that truly appeals to children. Roald Dahl seems to understand children, in that his stories are simple, and the stakes are easy to understand (can Sophie and The BFG stop the other Giants from eating children?), but explore complex themes and relationships (Sophie is an orphan, longing for parental love and affection, she has to face many dangers and take the initiative herself).

There’s usually a very strong central hero to each story, and these are almost as likely to be girls as boys. Sophie faces true mortal peril in The BFG, and has to enlist The Queen of England in her quest to save England’s children. Matilda also has to outwit and survive’ the terrible Miss Trunchbull. Danny has to act decisively to help his father when a scheme goes awry.

There’s a healthy(?) disrespect for authority, especially when that authority is misplaced, unnatural, or exploits children. George inflicts a terrible trick with his Marvellous Medicine, but to be honest his Grandmother deserved it. Miss Trunchbull bullies and suppresses children in her school, but gets her come-uppance at Matilda’s hands, and we celebrate her downfall. Fantastic Mister Fox thieves and pillages from Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, but they are such grossly unpleasant men we are glad of it. When The Giant Peach squashes the miserable Aunts Spiker and Sponge and James makes his escape from their abuse, we are exhilarated and thrilled.

There’s an independence of spirit and courage in Roald Dahl’s characters that inspires children. This is made even more real by an often complete absence of parental figures, with the love, affection, attention and protection they would usually bring. Matilda is a child genius rejected by her parents. In James and the Giant Peach, James is an orphaned child who also rejected and abused by his two aunts. Sophie starts The BFG in an orphanage.  Yet despite these circumstances, the children use their wit, bravery and intelligence in positive and affirmative ways. They are never victims.

Best of all, Roald Dahl’s stories seem to assume that the fantastical and magical is and can be all around us, if we only believe it. He twists the norms of ‘old-fashioned’ children’s stories (remember he wrote many of these books in the 1960s), and subverts our expectations. His Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts collections of poems are clever and often extremely funny, like this take on Cinderella…

We’ve loved listening to his books read aloud, notably Geoffrey Palmer as The BFG, and Simon Callow’s inspired reading of The Twits. I’ve tried in vain to find a clip of that, but trust me, it’s fantastic. Alongside the richness of the characterisation, one of the biggest joys of reading Roald Dahl’s stories are the tremendous illustrations by Quentin Blake. They are utterly charming and bring the words to life with real magic.

Roald Dahl’s life and work has been brilliantly remembered at a museum in Great Missenden, which is true to his spirit for both adults and children. There are storytelling sessions, brilliant interactive exhibitions and hand-on displays, as well as dressing up opportunities…

Is that spaghetti in my beard?

I thoroughly recommend Roald Dahl’s fiction for children in pretty much all its forms, including the museum. Think like a child, be open to the magic, and you will be be thrilled forever.

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