Reviews

Matilda & the Tales She Told

Editorial Staff

A little girl with a highly active imagination, Matilda originates from Hilaire Belloc’s turn of the century Cautionary Tales for Children. Tilly’s story, which eventually delivers the same moral as The Boy Who Cried Wolf, is re-written for a happier ending than Belloc original, which actually sees the child try to raise the alarm about a house fire but end up burnt to a cinder.

Working from the corner of the Udderbelly Pasture’s small Wee Coo space, York-based Tell Tale Theatre cram a lot into their hour-long performance. With the original text running just under 350 words, the company build on it, managing to pack in the rhyming couplets, song, ballet and some visual storytelling. The musical interludes are discordant, rambling affairs backed by a violin and are just another ingredient in this busy piece.

Aunt and uncle are disgruntled guardians of Matilda and her elder brother Charles, with the former seen as a clumsy and dim child who tells lies. She finds herself constantly compared to her sibling’s academic and musical prowess.

Matilda’s first tall tale, which is nicely presented with card cut-outs puppeteered to the moon and back, is the closest the production comes to conjuring any kind of magic, which is the real shame. I may have become inexplicably puritan in my short trip to Wee Coo, but I also found an actor loudly exclaiming “God damn” to come from nowhere and totally inexcusable in this young person’s show. 

Matilda and the Tales She Told is a real hodgepodge of ideas. Chiara Tuckett and Freyja Winterson have failed to find the enchanting element of this aristocratic family and fanciful Tilly, leaving both young people and adults restless and unsatisfied.