This may have been the best Muny season in the 25 years I’ve been going regularly. Admittedly, I missed Cinderella and Footloose this year, but overall it’s been a delight, starting with a bang with Guys and Dolls and wrapping up their 101st season with Matilda, a remarkable evening’s experience.
It beggars journalistic tradition, perhaps, to begin a review to talk about the chorus of a show. But the Muny Kids and Muny Teens who make up the Youth Ensemble were an utter delight in Matilda. The show isn’t one of those syrupy cliches – indeed, it’s altogether fitting and proper to use the word acerbic to describe much of it.
Adapted from the work of Roald Dahl – whose own work was much massaged by his editors to ease his views on, among many other things, females – Matilda is the story about a smart little girl born into a family not unlike the Dursleys of Harry Potter fame. And like Harry, Matilda has a story which takes place in the United Kingdom and involves school.
Mattea Conforti is the poised and self-confident Matilda, a fine portrayal of a strong very young woman. Her father (Josh Grisetti), who sells used cars, and her mother (Ann Harada), who enters dance contests and has no idea she was pregnant with Matilda (her second child) are horrified by Matilda’s (self-taught) reading skills and intellectual curiosity. Her father, who invariably addresses her as “Boy”, has spoken with the headmistress at the school where she’s to begin, warning about his offspring’s unpleasant habit of reading. One can guess the school isn’t prepared for a 5-year-old who’s read Dickens and Austen. The ghastly headmistress, Miss Trunchbull (Beth Malone), shown below, is quite the administrator. She’s offset by the sweet Miss Honey (Laura Michelle Kelly), Matilda’s teacher, who is blown away by her pupil’s ability.
But here I am writing in metaphoric pencil about something that’s done in oils with the vigor and imagination of a Van Gogh. The exaggeration, the jokes, the perpetual struggle of kids against grownups who aren’t what they seem to other grownups. (Who among us as a child was able to stand up to a teacher who falsely accused us of something?) It’s bigger and wilder than life.
And as to actual color – the school set is darkish, but the total usage of the brilliant Mary Engelbreit style in costumes and sets fits right into this world. It’s the perfect spot for her work, which left its early constant sweetness to become an esample of intelligence and social conscience. And humor. Don’t forget the humor, like the babies in the nursery where Matilda is born.
The chorus is amazing, a carefully choreographed (by Beth Crandall) immense mob, illustrating the fantasies the show offers. The size of the Muny stage and the number and talents of the young ones is a combination that could probably only be done here. Revel in it.
The phrase in the program is “inspired by the world of Mary Engelbreit”, but credit also goes to Paige Hathaway’s scenic design, Leon Dobkowski’s costumes, Nathan W. Scheuer’s video designs and the wig designs – wait. Let’s talk about the wigs. Mrs. Wormwood’s was clearly inspired by one of the later kings of France. You can’t miss it. It’s from Kelley Jordan. They’ve all done exactly the right things.
John Tartaglia, who’s acted at the Muny before (his great Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum won the St. Louis Theatre Circle award that year) and is known as a puppeteer working in Avenue Q, is making his Muny debut directing here. Let’s keep him.
Not your usual Muny show, perhaps, and certainly not your usual Muny “kid show”. But an absolute joy.
Matilda
through August 11
The Muny
Forest Park