Stage-to-screen review:Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical

Dennis Kelly (book) and Tim Minchin's (music and lyrics) musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda was first seen in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2010 and made it to the West End in 2011, but it took until 2022 for a movie adaptation (now streaming on Netflix) to be released. The wait seems to have been an entirely positive thing, as it's allowed Matthew Warchus - who also directed the original production - to look at it afresh, and come up with a screen version that doesn't really take many visual cues from the stage show, but does match it for eccentric charm. The opening song, "Miracle," is set on a maternity ward, and when we got a series of shots of babies in cribs, soundtracked by their thoughts singing about how amazing their parents tell them they are, I knew this was going to be fun.

Matilda (Alisha Weir,) of course, isn't one of those kids because her parents Mr and Mrs Wormwood (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough) don't think she's that special at all, and her father in particular, who wanted a son, refuses to acknowledge that she's a girl for many years.

The story sees Matilda start school, and the stage show's casting conceit is that older children play these tiny children, and that adults play the older kids. On screen that's a bit too much of a suspension of disbelief to pull off, so to explain her starting school so old the film gives us a plot where her parents entirely forgot to send her, and pretend to have home-schooled her when they get caught. But instead of being behind, Matilda is a savant who's taught herself to read and gone on to devour half the library, so she ends up using her intellect, sense of mischief, and "telekineptic" powers that manifest rather late on in the story, to lead the other children in a rebellion.

Given that she's best-known on screen for playing 007, Lashana Lynch is interestingly cast against type as the mousy teacher Miss Honey, but she's very likeable in the part, and it's fun to see her play someone who finds strength rather than having it from the start. Naturally the scene-stealing part in the story is of bullying headmistress Miss Trunchbull, and Emma Thompson obviously relishes a chance to get under a ton of prosthetics and chuck children over walls. And Weir is spot on as the young lead, with a mix of mischievousness and a severe glare that sells the character's sense of justice.

But I did particularly appreciate the visual touches that properly turn this into a film in its own right. Turning Mrs Phelps' (Sindhu Vee) library into a mobile one means we get a different, fairytale-like backdrop for every instalment of the tragic story Matilda tells her about a pair of circus performers - and I felt that story's integration into the main narrative worked better here than in the stage show.

The musical numbers each get their own visual identity: "School Song," with its garbling of the A-Z, is Minchin's best example of his own mischievous use of language, and here turns into a hellish descent into the dungeon-like school; "When I Grow Up" becomes a very literal, sweet representation of the children's ideas of how their adult life will be. When Trunchbull makes Bruce Bogtrotter (Charlie Hodson-Prior) eat an entire chocolate cake as punishment for stealing a slice, the resulting "Bruce" is the show's best song, and here I particularly liked the way it showcased Ellen Kane's choreography. As a stage-to-screen adaptation, I'd just pencilled this in as something to fill in a theatre-lite week for me, but ended up feeling like it reinvented the show's energy and quirkiness for me anew.

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin, based on the book by Roald Dahl, is streaming internationally on Netflix.

Running time: 2 hours.

Photo credit: Dan Smith / Netflix / Sony Pictures UK & Tristar Pictures