My last post happened to be on the same day the Matilda musical opened. Now I'm seeing rave reviews and very much hoping that some folks are eying it for this side of the pond.
I turned up to the RSC's new musical version of Roald Dahl's Matilda expecting a pretty classy children's show. What I wasn't anticipating was the best British musical since Billy Elliot and a smash hit that will surely be the toast of the West End once its run in Stratford is over.
Dennis Kelly, as adaptor, has, if anything, heightened Dahl's awareness of both the mean-spirited and the miraculous. Matilda is a brilliantly precocious child detested equally by her dodgy car-dealer father and her ballroom-dancing obsessed mother. And, at school, she falls prey to the evil machinations of the diabolical headmistress to whom all children are maggots. But, in Kelly's version, Matilda is not just a voracious reader and opponent of injustice. She is also a prophetic storyteller who magically prefigures the plight of her one schoolroom champion, the aptly named Miss Honey.