Tim’s musical Matilda is a big screen triumph - Karen Koren

I went to the cinema with the family the other day to see the new movie Matilda the Musical – it was absolutely brilliant and worth going to see before it moves over to Netflix soon.

Matilda the Musical

Movies are always better on the big screen and this more than most, because of the amazing dance sequences and the musical numbers and great cinematography. I wasn’t sure how they were going to adapt Roald Dahl’s Matilda from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s successful stage musical – with Tim Minchin’s music and lyrics and Dennis Kelly’s book - as it was so perfectly put together from the grotesque Headmistress Trunchbull played by a man and all the amazingly talented child actors.

I was lucky enough to go to the premier of Matilda the Musical in the West End when it was first performed with Tim Minchin and his family in October 2011. Tim had been performing at the Gilded Balloon since 2005 and I had become firm friends with him and his family. I found Tim in a small theatre in Melbourne and brought him over to Edinburgh. His life changed after that first year and he went from moving to London and writing with the RSC, the rest as they say is history. There has been no looking back and I am incredibly proud of what Tim has achieved.

I was astounded by how clever the whole stage show was with an incredibly well designed and constructed set and the sequences of children on swings into the audience. Tim’s lyrics in Miracle, When I Grow Up, Little Bit Naughty, Quiet and Revolting Children were perfectly in tune with Dahl’s story. It was at the time one of the best Musical’s I had ever seen.

How to transfer that to the big screen seemed almost impossible. However, they have managed by making the movie bigger, with huge Hollywood style musical numbers and a great cast. They have lost a few of the songs but it does not take away from the enjoyment of the film. Alisha Weir in the title role is outstanding. Emma Thompson as the headmistress Miss Trunchbull is exceptionally larger than life, Matilda’s awful parents are played superbly by Stephen Grant and Andrea Riseborough, Mrs Phelps the librarian by stand up comedian Sindhu Vee and Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey, the paragon of all goodness and light. But it’s the children that steal the show, with amazing choreography and high jinks – sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit Naughty!