”Matilda the Musical” review – a movie miracle

A confession. Twelve years ago (almost to the day) my parents sat me down in front of their rickety PC and got me to sign myself and my siblings up for the RSC Key – a now (sadly retired) scheme to get young people into theatre. A few weeks later, with a trusty £5 ticket in my hand, we went to the temporary Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to witness the birth of what has since become a musical juggernaut – the multi-award-winning Matilda, winner of many Tony Awards and possibly one of the biggest stage exports from the UK’s subsidised sector this century.

Since 2010, composer Tim Minchin, writer Dennis Kelly and director Matthew Warchus’ kooky production of Roald Dahl’s much-loved children’s tale about a woe-ridden schoolgirl who develops superpowers to overthrow her tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull, has played in the West End, on Broadway and across the world in locations like the Philippines, Korea, South Africa, China and beyond. It’s got countless fans, spawned many a musical career and marked the RSC’s biggest commercial success since that whole palaver with the French barricades. But it holds a special place in my heart because I was there, with a £5 ticket, at the start of it all.

Now, of course, I’ve grown up, and like any successful musical (*cough*, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, Wicked, Rent, Mamma Mia!, Into the Woods, The Color Purple, Hairspray, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera *cough*) Matilda has made its way to the big screen. Well – in a sense – in the UK and Ireland it’s hitting cinemas this week, whereas everywhere else it’ll be plopped straight onto Netflix next month.

Why this is the case is a mystery. It may simply have been the bi-product of corporate juggling after Netflix’s acquisition of the Road Dahl Story Company. Maybe US distributors were afraid that the shadow of the 1996 Matilda movie, courtesy of Danny DeVito, would be so long that it’d put any Americans off a new version, and decided against going for a riskier cinematic release.

Either way, it’s a bit of a shame for our US colleagues, because this Matilda is a bright, buoyant bonanza of musical whimsy, that needs to be witnessed on the big screen in order to be served up at its sumptuous best.

Not least because of RSC regular Ellen Kane’s choreography (Kane, along with director Warchus, is one of many returning for the film after helping birth the stage show in Stratford) is physically spellbinding – retaining the heart of what made the stage show so quirkily kinetic

Warchus, reuniting with Pride director of photography Tat Radcliffe to show a heightened sense of visual playfulness that suits the source material perfectly. On Pride Warchus and Radcliffe presented an earnest, no-frills tone that let Stephen Beresford’s screenplay do all the talking. Here – soaring shots, zoom punches and whirling

If it sounds visually anarchic it is – but it’s helped no end by Rob Howell’s costumes (another Matilda stage alum) and Anna Lynch-Robinson designs – creating a cohesive,

Much was made of Emma Thompson’s casting (normally the role is given to a male actor, with Ralph Fiennes even said to be courted)