“Matilda” is the anti-“Annie.” The evil adults in its bookish, telepathic heroine’s abuse-ridden life aren’t foster parents or stepparents but the child’s real progenitors: a used-car salesman with atrocious sideburns and his spiteful spouse, an obsessive dancer. Both are too ignorant and obnoxious to notice that their daughter is not only a sweet kid but a genius. The dad, in fact, can’t even get it through his thick hairstyle that the child he calls “boy” is really a girl.
Spunkiness and cuteness aren’t advantages in the “Matilda” world. Here, blonde pigtails are handles for adults to swing you around by. If you’re caught eating cake, you’re forced to eat more cake until you’re violently ill. Life lessons imparted by authority figures include “Fair doesn’t get you anywhere” and “To teach the child we must first break the child.”
The children in the show (frequently referred to as “maggots”) are initially introduced as insufferable brats, but as it becomes clear that the so-called grown-ups are even brattier, the tykes get more and more endearing. They also get even, thanks to little Matilda, whose war cry is “That’s not right.”
Subversive and uncompromising, “Matilda” is firmly in the spirit of the Roald Dahl book on which it’s based, but it creates fresh metaphors and exaggerations and sheer madness that equal what Dahl devised. Dennis Kelly’s script and Tim Minchin’s songs are infernally clever, so much so that it’s annoying whenever you can’t understand a line or lyric because an actor’s British accent is too thick, or the sound is too echo-y. This isn’t just a show about a smart, creative, free-thinker who challenges the status quo: Kelly, Minchin and director Matthew Warchus are such people themselves.
“Matilda” is the show it wants to be, and it’s the audience’s responsibility to keep up. An inventive story-within-a-story structure, relentlessly energetic dance routines, razor-witted turns of phrase and a punkishly bombastic score provide continual twists and surprises. The 24-person cast — pretty evenly divided between children and adults — is cartoonish and chaotic, but under control. The writing is simply too good for the show to descend into dumbness and obviousness.
Three girls alternate in the role of Matilda. On Wednesday it was Lily Brooks O’Briant, who has all the essential talents needed for the role: clear speaking voice, good timing and adorably unkempt hair. There are eight other child roles in the shows, plus a couple of songs where adult performers dress in school uniforms to be the bullying “big kids.”
Matilda’s parents are played with oversized oomph by Cassie Silva and Quinn Mattfeld, while her dim-witted, TV-addicted brother, Michael, is given a contrasting good-natured loutishness by Danny Tieger (a Hartford native and Watkinson School alum). The showy role of Miss Trunchbull, the sadistic school principal, goes to David Abeles, whose Broadway credits include Jerry Lee Lewis in “Million Dollar Quartet” and Eamon in “Once.” Abeles plays Trunchbull archly and angrily — no nuanced gestures here, and no pretense that he’s anything other than a man in a dress.
There are nice characters in this show, too, who have to work hard and sing beautifully to counteract all that attention-grabbing malevolence. Jennifer Blood is the winsome schoolteacher Jenny Honey, and Ora Jones, a member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is an unflappably upbeat Mrs. Phelps, the librarian who befriends Matilda and listens avidly to her wild adventure stories. These women are respites from the rampant nastiness which suffuses the show.
“Matilda” is visiting the state for the first time since it played a series of “open technical rehearsals” at the Shubert in New Haven before the start of the national tour a year ago. The “Matilda” tour sticks very closely to the Broadway production, closer than many tours bother. Yes, objects (and children) aren’t hurled as far, and the lighting effects aren’t as startling, but the overall scale and grandeur is maintained. The library shelves tower high, the classroom scenes are deep and dark, and the same amount of equipment is dragged out for the acrobatics in the “Smell of Rebellion” number.
At the same time, you get a pleasant sense that even when “Matilda” eventually has to strip away some of these extremes for future tours — not to mention whenever the performance rights trickle down to schools and small theaters — the show will still work just fine. The proof is in the closing “Revolting Children” number, where a bunch of kids scream and stomp about the stage without any technical fuss whatsoever. It’s a great event, a true revolt.
“Matilda” can be precise and pristine when it needs to be (as with the graceful, tear-jerking showstopper “When I Grow Up”), but it can also just go gloriously nuts.
It has been announced that the Broadway production of “Matilda” will close on New Year’s Day after running for nearly four years. This tour will change some cast members in May, and does not seem to be returning to Connecticut next season. This is the time to catch “Matilda” while its superpowers are still highly charged, and while it’s still loud, naughty and smelling of rebellion.
“MATILDA THE MUSICAL: “The national tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company production continues at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford, through May 1. Remaining performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $17.50-$119. Information: 860-987-5900, bushnell.org.
