How Do You Solve A Problem Like "Matilda"?

I can't bring myself to sugarcoat it: Roald Dahl is rolling in his grave. "Matilda," a musical based on his beloved book with a touring production that recently played Denver's Buell Theater, has plenty of aspirations but falls short on nearly every count. The musical kicked off the Denver Center's Broadway attraction season, so fingers crossed that the remaining selections are all uphill from here.

In case you aren't familiar with the story, "Matilda" is a comedic fantasy that follows its titular character, a young girl with remarkable intelligence and growing mental powers. After identifying a kindred spirit in the sweetness of her teacher, Miss Honey, Matilda finds clever ways to contend with her mean-spirited family and the bullying headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull. All of this is told with a strength and self-reliance that's unusual for a book aimed at children (and one of my favorites growing up). Dahl protects Matilda from feeling sorry for herself and instead empowers her to stand up for herself and for others.

How could something directly inspired by Dahl's vivid, one-of-a-kind imagination possibly go so far off the rails? Easily: by trying to appeal to everyone, the musical ends up appealing to no one. The 1996 film version of "Matilda" (directed by Danny Devito, of all people) made changes to the book but still managed to capture the lively, snarky spirit of its pages. In its translation to the stage, the show loses all of the sophisticated charm that the book so lovingly grants its precocious heroine and her misadventures. The wildly uneven tone of the musical zigs and zags from forced, phony slapstick to needlessly bleak to syrupy sentiment and even to out-of-place bodily humor in such a breakneck, bipolar way from scene to scene that it's ultimately not suitable for children or adults. Which begs the question, "How did it legitimately earn THAT many Tony nominations?" Thirteen of them. 13! I'm hardly superstitious, but I'm reconsidering my stance on the ominous significance of that number...

My first of many disappointments with the show happened within seconds of the curtain rising. As with any show prominently featuring child actors (who don't have the benefit of years of stage training and vocal coaching that older peers do), two important distinctions need to be made. First, especially when accents are involved, diction is beyond critical -- it's a make-or-break situation. From the first lines of the show, I had considerable trouble discerning what the children were saying and singing, especially Matilda herself. Sure, all actors slip up and blur their pronunciations from time to time, but this literally happened throughout the entire show. This is problematic if for no other reason than these children are responsible for practically the whole plot. The second distinction that went unchecked was the vast difference between energetic, youthful exuberance and just being shrill. To make matters worse, the second problem only exacerbated the first, rendering the majority of the show unwatchable and unenjoyable.

The adult actors didn't fare much better. Many of them (notably Matilda's neglectful parents) were saddled with throwaway musical numbers that are flashy enough to show off their song-and-dance moves but do little to further the story or their characters. Yes, they're horrible people -- we get it! We don't need whole songs that revel in their cruelty and their vapidity. A further source of adult embarrassment was the ineptitude of the stage crew, who I would hope are seasoned professionals. In this modern age of theater and advanced illusory techniques, they were unable to seamlessly and convincingly deploy the special effect of Trunchbull swinging a child by her pigtails, only to have her land safely in the arms of her fellow students. For an allegedly Broadway-caliber production, it looked entirely too fake to find the act of her being thrown even mildly amusing.

There is the faintest of lights, however, at the end of this collapsed tunnel of a show. The music and lyrics were composed and written by Tim Minchin, a noted musical comedian with an international following. Minchin provides strikingly unique orchestrations and wordplay for the show, perfectly capturing Dahl's dual vision of whimsy and angst even when the show fails to do so. As much as I like Minchin and his work, though, they deserve a much better vehicle to be presented to the public. Thankfully, there are some solid lighting effects and set design, which admittedly do warrant the aforementioned award nominations and eventual wins in the technical categories. In fact, a single memorable sequence choreographed the interplay of music, lyrics, lights, and set for a rather dazzling result.

As Matilda reports for her first day of school, the older students warn her and the other incoming youngsters to be on their best behavior or else incur the wrath of Trunchbull. Near the end of this number -- aptly if blandly titled "School Song" -- the older students scale the main gate of the academy, staggering into the ironwork blocks of various sizes for each letter of the alphabet (a recurring motif in the set pieces). With rapid-fire precision, the blocks are simultaneously placed by students and illuminated by spotlights right as a corresponding lyric containing that letter is sung. The calculated timing of this scene is one of two elements of the show that truly must be seen to be believed.

Ironically, Trunchbull becomes the very linchpin that holds the show together... if you can get past giggling at the vocal intonations that land somewhere among Alan Rickman, Riff Raff from "Rocky Horror," and skit sensation Old Gregg. It's an assured and confident performance of a patently unlikeable character that manages to flesh out the character without compromising her lack of redeeming qualities. The fact that actor Bryce Ryness -- that's right, Trunchbull is played firmly tongue-in-cheek by a man -- relishes every disdainful glance, menacing stride, and verbal onslaught makes the joy of beholding such nastiness more lasting than you'd expect. As well as the role is played, it's severely symptomatic of larger issues with the show if the central villain that we're meant to despise is the only thing the audience can safely embrace.

If you need any further evidence as to how the production squandered its potential, think about this for a moment: the musical was developed with and originally staged by the prestigious, world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company. How can a show with such a pedigreed background end up failing so miserably? Artistically, that is. Critically and commercially, the show has apparently been quite a success. Perhaps we'll never know what might have been if the producers had hewed closer to Dahl's version of the tale. Putting his name above the title almost seems misleading given the departures from his work. Fortunately, we can cherish the certainty locked within that old adage, rarely more true in recent memory than when considering "Matilda" as a musical: the book is always better.