Matilda the Musical - Lost in Adaptation
For my first article as our local musical fanatic, I wanted to showcase one of my personal favourites and explain how and why it works, by comparing Matilda the Musical on stage with the recent 2022 movie musical adaptation. This will be a spoiler-free review, going over some of the adaptation choices, regarding adaptation for intended audiences, and one of the biggest flaws that snuck in during the adaptation process.
Who is it for?
The original book by Roald Dahl was intended for kids, to see a little girl who loves reading, overcomes difficult situations, and wants things to be just. Putting her in a very unjust environment that gets resolved by the end, through compassion and a little smart problem-solving (and telekinesis). By this point, so many adults grew up on it, or at least the 1996 movie with Danny DeVito, that it’s become a staple even outside of those who read the book.
The stage musical adapted the book freshly, picking scenes that are iconic and mixing it with commentary on how kids are often treated, while creating a genuinely impactful story about child self-empowerment and adults still having to deal with difficult situations that can make them feel small. The vibes are immaculate and Matilda’s family, the Wormwoods, are ridiculous enough to bring a brighter atmosphere and add some adult humour, to balance out the frankly terrifying headmistress, the Trunchbull. A colourful and fun performance with a beautiful set, that can make kids and adults laugh and cry, which makes it a perfect family experience.
Then there is the movie musical. I don’t enjoy bashing things, and it did do some things well, like the singers being pretty decent, or some of the imagery during the song Quiet or Revolting Children, but oh does the adaptation struggle with who it is for. Opening with the words “To change the world it needs a little genius” is already a choice (TM), but I guess you can whittle the idea down from compassion and community to one special person fixing it all, even if it weakens the story’s moral. They cut essentially all of the adult commentary and jokes, reduced the Wormwood’s screentime and plot that added a lot of needed light-heartedness to balance out the school storyline, and weakened the connection between Matilda and her teacher Miss Honey by cutting a good chunk of her story. It feels like they wanted to make this a children’s movie and forgot what children are halfway through, making Matilda a hero protagonist with superpowers, rather than a little girl who is clever and can levitate a glass of water or some chalk. It’s a fine movie on its own, but you are missing so much, and it is a pretty poor adaptation.
I had to pause at certain points during the movie and just take in how the framing, combined with Netflix lighting, sometimes makes Matilda feel like a horror movie monster, with an exchange about the Trunchbull going verbatim
“I'm not scared of her!”
“You should be. She's dangerous.”
”So am I.”
Girl, you are five years old.
The Plot Thinnens
Let's first have a moment of silence for the characters we lost: Matilda’s brother and Mrs Wormwood’s part Italian dance partner Rudolpho. Admittedly Matilda’s brother in the stage version doesn’t add very much other than vague comic relief that gets uncomfortable when you realize that the joke is that he is portrayed as mentally disabled. I cannot fathom what led to this choice in the musical, and while getting rid of him gets rid of the unfunny joke, it does also take away from the Wormwood family dynamic. Matilda’s mom having a very loud hobby in dancing, while Matilda prefers the quiet, was a great way to show the differences between the family members when they aren’t actively interacting, especially when contrasted with Matilda’s favourite teacher, Miss Honey, visiting the same library as her.
Both of these got cut for the movie, and it made me wonder what else they cut.
The answer is: Lots of things! But this is where I run into constraints regarding spoilers. I don’t want you sitting here having me compare things you might not even know, so I’ll stick to some basic examples for now and promise that the same thing happens all over the place.
Using some early scenes that were famously in the older versions, Matilda messing with hair oil and putting glue in a hat, were both responses to things that Mr Wormwood did on stage in the musical. He’s a liar, boasting that everyone trusts people with good hair, so she ruined his hair for him, making the outside match the inside, mixing chemicals that were explicitly meant to be kept out of reach of children. That direct line from point A to B was missing, just like Matilda putting glue in his hat was a response to him telling her to glue a book to hers originally. It was robbed of context in the adaptation.
And that, my friends, is the key issue I have with the scripting of the adaptation. They kept all the big moments (important to specifically Matilda, other character moments often got cut completely), but it feels like they didn’t even know why the moments happened in the first place. The basic rules of setup and follow-through were thoroughly ignored. Chekhov would be disappointed.
There were only so many things I could say about this adaptation without ever touching on spoilers, and that 100% includes the music. So now go and listen to the stage musical, or look it up somewhere (TM) and get ready for a full spoiler music analysis in part two!
(Editor note: Part 2 of this article, with spoilers included, will come out soon!)
Written by Nic Treczoks, a dedicated Writing Committee member!
You can find Nic on Instagram: @nic_has_a_nac