The stage musical version of Roald Dahl’s great children’s novel “Matilda”, with a book by Dennis Kelly and music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, is difficult enough for a professional company to perform, but could be considered almost impossible for a school to put on even in a condensed Junior version running at just an hour. The lightning speed and extremely clever but treacherous lyrics of most of Minchin’s songs would make most young performers shudder, with only some beautiful ballads to slow down their breath intake – and then there’s the special effects required. But Trinity College’s South School, using their Year 7 to Year 10 students, pull it together fairly well.
The story of a little girl, Matilda, who gains intelligence and learns to conquer fear through reading is pretty well known (even if it is through the glossed over film version of 1996). Like all Dahl’s novels it is the classic story of Good vs Evil, with Evil being really evil and Good being incredibly good. The musical version is basically a black comedy. This production of the Junior version as directed by Cassie Laidlaw concentrates on the blackness and darkness rather than the humour, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Nikita Greeff is absolutely delightful as Matilda, giving a nicely well rounded character without ever being precocious. Her acting and vocals are strong with, in particular, “Quiet” being the hit it should be. The ‘good’ teacher that sees Matilda’s potential, Miss Honey, is played wonderfully by Chiara Puccini. She has it all and works very well with Nikita and Michael Hereware as the villainous Headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, in particular.
Traditionally the role of Miss Trunchbull is played by a male (even though the film version of the musical cast Emma Thompson in the role) and it is nice to see that Laidlaw has followed the tradition by casting Michael in the role. I saw this young man recently in Trinity’s production of “Mamma Mia!” and was quite impressed with his performance, but as Trunchbull he impresses on a whole new level. He hits the heights of nastiness and evilness making us quake with fear and laughter at the same time. He gives one of those performances that stay with one long after a show has finished – for all the right reasons.
The roles of Mr and Mrs Wormwood, Matilda’s parents, are not the best written roles, being fairly over the top exaggerated, with adults finding it hard to hit just the right level. So, it’s good to see that Kiera Males and Layne Warhurst, respectively, manage to pull the roles off fairly well. It would have been nice though to see more of a ‘Spiv’ character from Kiera. Haleigh Soph is very convincing as a boy.
Theo French (The Escapologist), Charlene Yeap (The Acrobat) and Jake Stoker (Bruce Bogtrotter) stand out well in their roles, with some lovely cameos by Myles Schmidtke as hip-swirling Rudolpho and little Ashton Hunt as the Cook. Ashton certainly proves that age old theatrical adage: there are no small parts, only small actors. By only appearing for a millisecond and not saying a word, Ashton stole the show wonderfully by being a very twitchy nervous character and clearly scared of Miss Trunchbull. We got all that in his actions and facial expressions alone – truly the sign of a very promising young actor.
All cast sing Minchin’s tongue twisters brilliantly. It’s also pleasing to note that lights, sound and backstage crew were students under mentorship. Good job all.
Earlier I mentioned that “Matilda” was hard to perform because of special effects that are required. In this production they are done very well – the cake one threw me completely and the ‘hammer throwing’ of a little pig-tailed girl, whilst being simple, was so effective that it received a well deserved round of applause the night reviewed.
