![]() Matilda’s parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough) are dimwits and cheats. When Weir, just 11 when she filmed the movie, narrows her blue eyes and sings, “Sometimes, you have to be a little bit naughty,” you believe she’s capable of conquering anyone who blocks her path. His writing forever burned with a youthful sense of injustice, and among the many smart decisions the director Matthew Warchus and the writer Dennis Kelly have made in adapting “Matilda” for the stage, and now screen, is reimagining their title character, played with empathetic ferocity by Alisha Weir, as a bit of a proto-Dahl herself, a bright child bursting with stories that take aim at the adults who try to trod on her intelligence. The novel was Dahl’s righteous payback for his own British boarding school education where the instructors freely beat the students and slipped slivers of soap into boys’ mouths at night if they snored. Roald Dahl was 72 when he published his tale of a telekinetic girl genius avenging herself upon on a school headmaster who shot-puts kids out of the classroom window. ![]() ![]() Bitterness never tasted so sweet as it does in “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical,” a jolt of sour candy guaranteed to make you grin. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |