loud and quiet
by Douglas Messerli
Dennis Kelly (book), Tim Minchin (music
and lyrics) Matilda / New York, Sam
S. Schubert Theatre, the performance I attended as a matinee on May 5, 2013
The most surprising theatrical
experience of this year was provided by the British musical Matilda, based on Roald Dahl’s
children’s book. Long before the musical opened and was heaped with praise from
New York Times reviewer, Ben Bratley,
I had ordered tickets and was looking forward to enjoying it. Along with Kinky Boots it has garnered since the
highest number of Tony nominations.
The set, consisting of a series
of lettered blocks cascading across the stage and into the audience space, was
quite innovative, and all the technical aspects of this work, particularly the
lighting, was wall done. And who wouldn’t love the ridiculously mean
child-hater, Miss Trunchbull (played in drag by the excellent Bertie Carvel),
the absurdly mindless Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood (Leslie Margherita and Gabriel
Ebert) and their brain dead son, Michael (Taylor Trensch). The choruses of
urchin dancers put their collective talents in high gear through singing and
dancing, and little Oona Lawrence (playing the role Mitilda) was charmingly
able and cute. The audience, filled with overweight girls whose parents think
it their responsibility to stock each of them with sacks of candies to be
crunched throughout the play, absolutely loved
it. So why didn’t I?
Was I turning and old curmudgeon, I pondered mid-way through the first
act, the likes of which I’ve always promised myself I would never become. At
the intermission, however, the couple next to me, seasoned theater-goers so I
had discerned from our pre-curtain discussions, quietly asked me what I thought
about the work. I paused, not wanting to staunch anyone’s joy of the
performance. “We don’t like it all,” she quietly confided. “I even thought we
should go home during intermission” added her husband. And I admitted, for the
first time in my life, that I to had just resisted doing the same myself. So
began the second act, which continued much as the first—for me an utterly
joyless and rote playing out of the ridiculous fairytale about a little girl
who is punished for being smart.
Part of the problem was simply the mumbling
of the mostly British cast (Bratley did warn of this). It was often simply hard
to understand the lyrics of the basically tuneless songs. Having perceived
that, perhaps, the director apparently attempted to turn up the volume, as if
we were all hard of hearing. In fact in the 7th song of act one, the
singers note that issue precisely in the number “Loud,” and in the final act
Matilda herself observes that suddenly, momentarily at least, things have grown
“Quiet,” the third song from the last.
Accompanying these “loud” pastiches, all
of which sound, like so much contemporary theater music, as if they were
created by a machine programmed to connect the dots, are the well-intentioned dances
which both children and adults perform as if they have been robotized. While
they certainly leap about with great energy, there seems to be no joy in their
gyrations. Only the Wormwoods, she with her dancing partner Rudolpho (Phillip
Spaeth), he in his rubbery legged motions within striped lime-green pants, seem
to have any “choreographical” fun.
It is not, however, that Matilda, as its makers have argued, is a “dark”
work, as much as it is empty. While Annie, at least, had “tomorrow” to look
forward, Matilda is amazingly unflappable, committed to her reading and
thinking as mindlessly as Miss Trunchbull is committed to her hate. Despite
their thoughtless machinations, I think I’d prefer to live with the Wormwoods
than with the fantasy-spinning, slightly aloof Matilda. But, obviously, there
is no living with anyone in this tale, since each character is nothing more
than a cardboard, cartoonish type. Even the gentle Miss Honey lives out life in
a shed instead of a house, as if her whole world has been miniaturized and
flattened. Only Miss Trunchbull, ensconced her in ill-gotten mansion, has any
“bulk,” and she’s more fun than everyone else put together.
Indeed, despite the work’s pretense of siding with the small and quiet
Matilda, this musical advocates the loud and large, which is perhaps why all
the girls both in front and back of me sat throughout with their sacks of candy
on their laps.
So desperate to be loved was Dennis Kelly’s and Tim Minchin’s work, that
at one moment near the end, the stage suddenly burst—apparently in response to
the downfall of Miss Trunchbull—into a shower of strobe lights, while green lasers
shot out across the ceiling of the uncomfortable Schubert balcony. “Awesome,”
shouted out a child in the audience. It was at that point I had to admit that
this was simply not a work created for the likes of me—nor for my two dazed
neighbors, who together with me made our way grumpily back into the crowded
mid-town streets.
“Why do you think,” asked the wife, “this got such remarkably positive
reviews?” “I don’t know,” I responded, “but it might have something to do with
the fact that this has not been a particularly stellar season. Reviewers have to like something.”
Reprinted from Nth Position
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