Matilda is OBVIOUSLY winning best musical....- Page 5

[mikey2573]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 4:34pm

You seem to not acknowledge Kelly2's statement that none of the characters "takes enough decisive actions to change themselves". This comment is basically saying the same thing I was saying about the characters (more specifically Matilda herself). That was the part that confused me because you said you agreed with Kelly2 but disagreed with me, yet we both seem to be saying the same thing.

[Nick Murphy]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 8:39pm

I have one word for that: MOTOWN

[jnb9872]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 8:57pm

"Enough" is an evaluative adjective. Kelly is considering what is presented, recognizing what is there and determining it to be unsatisfying. Your comments present objective assertions. You state things about the show that are either ill-supported, ill-considered, ill-expressed or simply mistaken. I never hope to presume it's that last one, and that it's a linguistic imprecision that's hindering you, but I haven't been able to rule it out.

You two are not saying the same thing, though you still seem unaware of the distinction.

[mikey2573]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 9:36pm

To your point about "enough" as an evaluative adjective and that I did not make such qualifiers in my statement, I think you should reread my posts.
"You might say the "magical powers" but those were introduced so late in the musical and were done in such a lame, uninteresting way," I am admitting that Matilda had magical powers and she did things with them, I just found them to be a contrived and silly plot development.
"I guess show writes a message on the board and then the Headmistress runs away". Here again I am specifying that Matilda is doing something, I think it was just too little and too late in the story.
"I simply did not see Matilda doing much to "change her story"." MUCH is certainly evaluative.
"I certainly never made any connection between the (insignificant) actions of Matilda" I am not saying that Matilda NEVER did anything, I am simply saying her actions seemed insignificant to me. Again, evaluative.

Perhaps you could help me by indicating specific instances of something major that Matilda does results in her situation changing or her learning anything. You mentioned a few things before (something about how she encouraged Bruce) but I must have missed those in the performance I saw. Could you be specific about what she did to take control and change "her story"?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 9:42pm

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 9:57pm

Even without having seen the show, I fear that Matilda will win, with the possible upset by Motown. Guess I'm showing my age, but I'm sick and tired of spending zillions of dollars and getting nothing for my money. Billy Elliot, Spamalot (somewhat half-heartedly), Hairspray, yeah, I go along with that. Memphis, In the Heights, Millie, etc., etc., ugh!!!!! Just my thoughts, My Opinion. Don't shoot.

[uncageg]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 9:59pm

I thought her magic "powers" would move the story along. The first bit of magic was not done impressively in my opinion. The second bit was quite impressive visually but that was it. The ads around town seem to invoked whimsical and magical. The magic felt thrown in.

Updated On: 4/8/13 at 09:59 PM

[John Adams]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 11:42pm

>> You seem to not acknowledge Kelly2's statement that none of the characters "takes enough decisive actions to change themselves". This comment is basically saying the same thing I was saying about the characters (more specifically Matilda herself).

mikey, buddy, pal... In the book, Matilda is 5 years old (although onstage, she is played by actresses that are ~9 and 10 years old). What kinds of "decisive actions to change [herself]" can/should be expected?

In all honesty and very sincerely, I'm very much enjoying this discussion with you! I like that you're not "snarky" or "b*tchy"; that you make your points with conviction, but without malice or intent to wound.

AND... because I like talking with you so much, I have a gift for you:

I give you complete permission not to think so hard about this show, yet know that at least one person (me!) sees that you have the intelligence to do so when the need arises.

I give you complete permission to cheer when Matilda demonstrates psychokinesis; even though it appears in the 11th hour, out of nowhere, and makes absolutely no sense. ...because sensical or non-, that's the moment where she triumphs as a hero.

I give you complete permission to continue to dislike the show (and even me, if you want to) because:

"Nobody else is gonna put it right for you!
Nobody but you is gonna change your story!
Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty."

Updated On: 4/8/13 at 11:42 PM

[uncageg]

Posted: 4/8/13 at 11:59pm

I have been enjoying this thread. It kind of reinforces my feelings towards this show. A lot of good but a lot that just doesn't make me feel it should get the Tony. God I wish PIPPIN wasn't a revival!

[dreaming]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 12:31pm

Having just seen Matilda, I can say it has its good points (the adult actors were really good, the choreography was relatively inventive), and its weak points (the little girl I saw as Matilda didn't strike me as standing out in any way, and I'd thought in the back of my mind that the little girl in the role should stand out as exceptional. She had a decent voice, but I wasn't sold on the presence part of the performance.) That said, I think it's going to take best musical (not sure I would pick it but I think it will win). Bertie Carvel was outstanding-so glad they brought him over. He really steals the show as Miss Trunchbull. Whatever category they put him in, he will win. Lesli Margherita is also very, very good-her comic timing is impeccable. I also was impressed with Lauren Ward.

I think one of the faults of the show is that the kids (Jack Broderick being the exception-he was very good) are merely 'cute'. They don't match up to their adult counterparts in talent (and I guess I feel that since they're hired to do the same level of work, they should be better than merely cute). The music is also forgettable (although Miss Honey's act two song-My Home I think it's called-is very good-and I liked Miss Trunchbull's music). And I was not pleased with how far they deviated from the book (I personally wish they'd done the parrot scene-and they didn't pull the dad's hat off. One of my favorite parts in the book was when he pulled part of his hair off with the hat-and as obsessed as the dad was with his hair, I was waiting for it. I also wanted Miss Honey to confront BOTH parents, as she does in the book. She's not quite as weak in the book-she's galvanized to help Matilda after she sees how awful BOTH parents are.) I was also disappointed at the lack of development of Matilda's telekinetic ability-it's like it just came toward the end.

I do hope Bertie Carvel is rewarded-his performance really is amazing. (And I hope he makes himself a regular here on Broadway-I noticed in his credits he has quite a range of roles and I'd love to see him demonstrate them here.)

I also think one of the supporting ladies winning would be good (I really was bowled over by Lauren Ward, and I didn't expect to be. However, as I said above, Lesli Margherita's comic timing was excellent. I'd be hard pressed to pick between them.) As for leading actress with the Matildas-I'm not sold based on the girl I saw last night (Bailey Ryon). Being cute does not a Tony winner make. I'd rather see Patina or Laura Osnes take it.

[mikey2573]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:10pm

I have to say there was nothing special about the little girl I saw play Matilda either. That is not to say she was not special, I am sure she is and I am sure she is very telented. I just don't think the character as written for this show is all that interesting. There is absolutely no reason for the role to be shared by 4 little girls and I think there might be a Tony backlash if the producers push for all 4 to get a nom. They should put the best one forward and hope she gets nominated for a Tony, but I doubt the Matildas will win (sorry girls). Like I said, I am sure they are each very talented, but the role itself just isn't very showy.
Bertie Carvel has a much showier role, but I still think it is very one note and one dimensional. When you consider the layers that Miss Hannigan has in ANNIE and compare her to Trunchbull, there is so much more an actor can do with Hannigan. I am thinking Carvel will get a nom in the Featured Actor category as it is not a main character (matilda and I think even the parents get more stage time). I am also still flabbergasted at the anticlimactic way Trunchbull is handled at the end. Someone so horribly EVIL (she grabs a girl by her pigtails and spins her around and then lets go) needs a horrible (and comical) demise. That doesn't happen here and it was very disappointing.

[alex2155]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:46pm

I wonder which girl is going to play Matilda on opening night!!?

[BOM]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 6:16pm

Why are people having such a problem with the ending of Matilda? It's how the book ended get over it.

[Kelly2]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 6:19pm

"It's how the book ended get over it."

Um, so any musical that has flawed source material should just leave those flaws "because that's how it was"? That's really stupid. Matilda, like any musical, would be a stronger musical for improving upon the weaknesses in its material and adapting it to suit the stage, not just creating a carbon copy.

When you're taking the written word and making it into a musical, the obvious differences in the mediums almost mandate a change in the material to make the transition.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 8:33pm

Agree with Mikey and Kelly-- Trunchbull's end was so anticlimactic I didn't believe we had come to the end of the show till the cast actually started bowing. That's poor staging and poor writing as far as I'm concerned.

[John Adams]

Posted: 4/10/13 at 10:59am

> I have to say there was nothing special about the little girl I saw play Matilda either. That is not to say she was not special, I am sure she is and I am sure she is very talented. I just don't think the character as written for this show is all that interesting.

> I think one of the faults of the show is that the kids (Jack Broderick being the exception-he was very good) are merely 'cute'.

It sounds like the Matildas for Broadway might not be as well cast as the Matildas from the West End production. I'm very impressed by their (the WE actresses) level of commitment to the emotions behind the role (particularly considering that they are 9 and 10 years old). You can really see it in their reactive facial expressions, and how sharp they are with the choreography.

This is my favorite WE Matilda (Hayley Canham) performing, "Quiet":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3TRIVWqWzo&t=0m22s

and here are all the WE Matildas performing, "Naughty" at the Oliviers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kguuLSxgQgE&t=0m12s

I don't see "cute" in their performances at all - but that doesn't mean I deny what dreaming saw on Broadway.

Still, the Tony award we're talking about here is "Best Musical". It's awarded to the producers of a show. (The performance awards all have their own, individual categories.)

So - if one element of a production, say, the casting of the Broadway Matildas (or the children in general), isn't as strong as its other combined elements, does that mean the production shouldn't win the award? Are there other production elements that make Matilda, the Musical less worthy than other shows this season? (I understand about the plot issues that have been raised, but to my mind, those are criticisms that lean more toward Roald Dahl's source material, rather than this show.)

I'm also considering that (IMO) the WE Matildas and the other children in that production were pretty outstanding - possibly better than in the Broadway production (I haven't seen the Broadway version yet). Also, that the RSC produced both productions.
Updated On: 4/10/13 at 10:59 AM

[finebydesign]

Posted: 4/10/13 at 11:04am

Critics were there the other night, LOVING it....

[StageStruckLad]

Posted: 4/10/13 at 11:06am

Anyone know which night the NY Times critic is attending? We saw Oona Laurence as Matilda last night, and she was excellent. I had a bit of trouble understanding some of her song lyrics, but I thought she did a great job overall. Based on the Playbill bios, she seemed to have the most experience of the four actresses playing Matilda.

[Buddy Plummer2]

Posted: 4/10/13 at 11:32am

^I'm going to say it now, once this show is reviewed tomorrow night, it's going to be indestructible come Award Season. Really, there is NO show, not Kinky Boots (dare I say, the Sister Act of the season?), nor Motown (however popular it gets, remember, Mamma Mia certainly didn't win in 2002) that stands in it's way.

And once it gets raves, the box office is going to explode. There's almost no precedent for this show. "Mary Poppins" sold out, but wasn't nearly as well reviewed, "Billy Elliot" was well reviewed but was not nearly this popular. Trust me, to whomever posted on here about having to tell a producer not to invest in this, boy did you miss out.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 4/10/13 at 3:41pm

Sorry, if "indestructable" is the measuring stick, Mamma Mia, for better or for worse, is still here. Not so the better-reviewed Producers, Hairspray, Spamalot, Spring Awakening, In the Heights, Memphis, Billy Elliot et. al. I'm not defending Mamma Mia (I thought it was innocuous, neither great nor awful) but I don't think anyone should be calling Matilda "indestructable" at this point. There's only so many kiddie shows that the traffic will allow, what with Lion King and Wicked still going strong, and Annie hanging in there. And before anyone jumps down my throat, Matilda is targeting a younger audience.

[StageStruckLad]

Posted: 4/10/13 at 3:51pm

Brantley reviewed the London production very favorably in January 2012. For those who don't have access to past NY Times articles, here it is:

LONDON — Smells like pre-teen spirit at the Cambridge Theater, where a throng of irresistibly fed-up boys and girls are storming the barricades of adult oppression. “Revolting children” they call themselves in the rousing final number of the musical “Matilda,” the fattest, sassiest hit of the season here. And the words have special savor for these kids because they’ve been used before, in another way.

“Revolting children” is what their sadistic headmistress had been calling them. And now, led by a polysyllabic little girl with the gift of telekinesis, they’ve turned an insult into a battle cry. These newly armed, formerly downtrodden creatures have learned one of the first lessons of revolution: who owns the language has the power.

This dictum is one of the morals of “Matilda,” which is based on Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel. A Royal Shakespeare Company production, with a book by Dennis Kelly and songs by Tim Minchin, “Matilda” is a sweet and sharp-witted work of translation, which — like its story-spinning title character — turns dark and sodden anxieties into bright and buoyant fantasies.

And not just the anxieties of being a little kid who knows monsters are lurking under the bed. If you think about it (not that you will while you’re watching this show), “Matilda” addresses many of the national worries that dominate the daily news here: an enfeebled and ineffective education system, corrupt business practices, abuses of power, organized crime, the mind-rotting effects of bad television, the imperilment of public libraries and the popularity of those tacky dance competitions.

There’s a raging thirst these days for tonics of the sort that “Matilda” dispenses. Last year Prime Minister David Cameron announced the creation of a “happiness agenda” that would evaluate the general (presumably depressive) state of mind of the British population and consider how to improve it. I’m serious.

The Sunday Observer even had a piece on how artists once known for confrontation, like Tracey Emin, are now turning to “feel-good,” morale-lifting projects. (Oh, did I mention that giant artificial sun — a Tropicana-sponsored art project — that was installed in Trafalgar Square as a January pick-me-up for light-starved Londoners?)

Certainly one of the factors in the popularity of the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy of Arts is its radiant palette, which this artist deploys to transform his gray-toned native northern England into somewhere over the rainbow. And this winter’s most conspicuous winners on the West End include the delightful “Ladykillers,” an adaptation of the 1955 Ealing Studios movie that churns tickling bubbles out of film noir menace, and a riotous revival of “Noises Off,” Michael Frayn’s great backstage farce, which finds an exhilarating precision in out-of-control chaos.

But for a family-oriented mood elevator, nothing matches the canny engineering of “Matilda.” Directed by Matthew Warchus (with such inventiveness that I forgive him for “Ghost: The Musical”), “Matilda” is hardly a sugar fest. It stays true to the tartness of Dahl, who reveled in the sinister and knew that children do too.

Visually and aurally, this production is more shadowy than sunny, and we’re always aware of the possibility of an unhappy ending. Mr. Minchin’s score, one of the most original in years, balances melody on the edge of dissonance, so that even can-do anthems have an undertow of apprehension.

In other words, “Matilda” is not “Annie,” the plucky 1977 musical that is planned for a Broadway revival, though the shows have superficial similarities. Both feature little girls of unusual resourcefulness and determination, pitted against a demented institutional authority figure.

In “Matilda” that’s Miss Trunchbull, a schoolmistress who lives to crush children’s spirits and is here given a gothic heft (by a wonderfully unwinking male actor, Bertie Carvel) that makes Miss Hannigan of “Annie” a lightweight. (In its portrayal of students in revolt “Matilda” also sometimes suggests a presexual version of the 2006 musical “Spring Awakening,” which it quotes disarmingly in its last number.)

Unlike Annie, Matilda Wormwood (played by four actresses in rotation; it was Cleo Demetriou at the performance I saw) is not an orphan. But she might as well be. Her loutish parents didn’t want to have her and they can’t stand her now that she’s a book-obsessed 5-year-old (who has taught herself Russian to read “Crime and Punishment” in its original language).

So Matilda makes up stories in which the sorrows of her lonely life become luxuriantly imaginative dramas (embodied through appropriately imaginative means onstage). Her father (a dishonest used-car salesman) is turned into an “escapologist,” which is a fair word to describe the creators of this show.

In telling her skyscraping tales, Matilda is paralleling the show in which she appears, pushing reality ever upward, into the stars. If “Billy Elliot” (the long-running show to which “Matilda” is regularly compared) was about transcending a grim world through the art of dance, “Matilda” celebrates the escape route of fiction.

I saw “Matilda” with a friend who’s a novelist, and when we entered the theater, she looked at the stage and sighed, “This is every writer’s dream.” The set, by Rob Howell (who also did the costumes), is a mosaic of suspended Scrabble-like tiles, and walls and walls of books. Hugh Vanstone’s lighting is crepuscular, and it’s as if all those letters were waiting to leap from the shadows and assemble themselves.

Since this is musical theater, it’s not just letters that leap. The choreographer, Peter Darling, dexterously uses an ensemble of children (and adults portraying children) to convey the tension of anarchic high spirits in regimented captivity. The child actors here are all terrific, straightforward and vigorous and mercifully untouched by preciousness.

Miss Trunchbull aside, the adult characters (who include a sensitive schoolteacher played by the lovely Lauren Ward) are mostly less persuasive. But that is perhaps as it should be in this child’s-view universe.

Ms. Demetriou, for the record, is no baby diva, no obnoxious “little trouper,” mimicking adult techniques. She exists comfortably as a real child to whom no one, including herself, condescends.

And though the show features some sensational ensemble numbers (including a nightmare phys-ed sequence), the highlight for me was Ms. Demetriou, alone on the stage, explaining in song how to take control of the narrative that is Matilda’s life. Characters like Jack and Jill and Romeo and Juliet “never stood a chance, they were written that way.”

She knows, she says, that “nobody but me is going to change my story.” And for as long as “Matilda” lasts, this disjointed old world seems fixable through the tools of pure imagination.

[John Adams]

Posted: 4/11/13 at 10:00am

> There is absolutely no reason for the role to be shared by 4 little girls and I think there might be a Tony backlash if the producers push for all 4 to get a nom.

There's some interesting info regarding the multi-casting of Matilda here: https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.php?thread=1057253&page=6
It begins with the 19th post on that page from Starship.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 4/11/13 at 12:49pm

Sorry missed that, Brantley was there last night and loving it.

[dreaming]

Posted: 4/11/13 at 12:51pm

He loved it London, is there any reason to believe he'd do otherwise here?

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 4/11/13 at 1:19pm

You never know with critics. Some of have loved shows when they see them in their first incarnation and have a different opinion when viewing them later. It happens. I'm not saying Brantley will pull a 180, but it wouldn't be the most shocking thing ever if his views towards it change.

(And, for what it's worth, I loved the show and hope that Brantley does indeed continue to view it in the same light as he viewed it over in London)