Matilda the Musical

Trying to get my bearings in London, I spent one evening looking up plays and museum exhibitions that I wanted to make sure not to miss this fall. I wrote them out on hot pink and lime green sticky notes and lined them up on my shelf. My theatre list was full of gems of the British stage: Conor McPherson, Noises Off, Measure for Measure, Donmar Warehouse's Richard II, Jerusalem's triumphant return to the West End... and Matilda: the Musical.

When I first read the listing for Matilda, I was disappointed: what a shame that someone had to go on and ruin one of my favorite books by turning it into a musical. Then I found out that it was the Royal Shakespeare Company's production and my dismay turned to disgust: how dare such a high quality organization as the RSC defile one of my favorite books! But that disgust was tinged with curiosity. I mean, if it was the RSC, it couldn't be that bad, could it?

Matilda and I go way back, so I am naturally protective of her reputation. I first met her in third grade where she was the read-aloud book chosen by my teacher, Mrs. Clegg, an amazing educator who understood that people who can read still like to be read to – especially if you do it with the voices! The other book we read aloud that year was A Wrinkle in Time. Those two books remain for me the highlights of all children's literature and you can bet anything they'll be on my kids' bookshelves someday. 

As I got more used to the idea of Matilda as a musical, the idea grew on me. In some ways it's prefect: an overly dramatic story, characters who are caricatures, and just a little bit of magic. So tonight I finally went to judge for myself. The show is offering eight tickets for 16-25 year olds at only £5 apiece. When I arrived at the theatre I was actually upgraded to empty seats in the orchestra– er, stalls. Right. Anyway excellent seats that should have cost almost ten times what I paid for them. 

As you enter the theatre the first thing that strikes you is the stage. The stage, proscenium, and walls of the house look like blackboards onto which a mixture of novelty Scrabble sets have been dumped. As the show goes on you see that Scrabble tiles and alphabet blocks are the major scenic element. And the rest of the show was just as innocently nostalgic. The children were charming and weird, the parents were abrasive and ridiculous, but what impressed me the most was just how much the characters looked like the Quentin Blake illustrations from the book. I was particularly struck by how much the actor playing Miss Trunchbull looked like the picture: the high bun, the short skirts, the humpback and flattened, droopy breasts. Something about the hands, maybe it was just that the part was played by a man so the scale was different, maybe it was something about how he held them, but the hands looked just as cartoonish as the illustrations.

Visually the production was stunning, and the story was ok. Like the movie there was plenty here that strayed from the text. The script focuses on the major episodes you remember from the book - the peroxide, the superglue, the newt in a cup, the chocolate cake - and simplifies the rest of the story. Matilda also becomes a storyteller, regaling the librarian with an episodic tale of circus performers and the daughter they love, which we eventually learn is Miss Honey's story that Matilda has picked up... telepathically? It's a weird leap, but at least they don't have Matilda breaking into Miss Trunchbull's house and setting traps like a reverse Home Alone. 

The script sometimes seems to be merely filler to remind you of the story you already know in between elaborate song and dance numbers – but what songs! what dances! What the show loses in plot, it makes up in spirit. It's smart. It knows it's material and it knows where it comes from. I laughed at the cheeky Dead Poet's Society moment and groaned at the tribute to Spring Awakening. But the idea is clear: this is above all a story about school, for everyone who has ever felt like they didn't fit in. From the moment you walk in and see the colored chalkboards that decorate the lobby and invite kids to draw on them, to the curtain call on scooters, the show is sweet and charming and just as fun to watch as the book was to read. I smiled through the entire closing number and left the theatre feeling warm and happy. It might be different from the book, but I feel like my Matilda is safe in their hands. 

But let's not do a musical of A Wrinkle in Time, ok?

This year was a Thanksgiving like none other in the sense that it didn't really happen for me.

Normally, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I am fully in support of a holiday that is mostly about food and family. It's a real break, time out of your busy routine that doesn't require weeks of advance preparation, like Christmas does. My classmates who aren't from the US sometimes have trouble understanding how big of a deal the holiday is, but they were all very supportive on the day and were sad for me that I didn't have time to celebrate.

The reason I didn't have time was that my first assessed essay, the assignment that would count for 20% of my entire degree, was due the Friday after. The whole History of Art MA program had essays due that day, which meant that around a third of the students at the Courtauld were competing for printer access and emotional space in the library. Stress builds on stress and my whole class was pushing ourselves into this emotional feedback loop. Lottie and I stayed up almost all night the two days before it was due, making final corrections and adjustments, seeking out obscure sources in the British Library. When I emerged from my room at 4am Friday morning to take a shower, she heard my door open and came out in the hall to commiserate together. Thank goodness we all had each other.

I turned in my essay Friday morning, several hours before the actual deadline, because I had a symposium to get to. The Tate was hosting a conference for the 100th anniversary of the first Blaue Reiter exhibition, and since my professor was presenting, most of our class attended.



We watched as members of the class joined the group one by one. One girl arrived for the beginning of the symposium, I arrived with another classmate toward the end of the first speaker. Others trickled in just before lunch, around tea time, until finally six of the eight of us had made it.

The symposium gave me a new perspective on Der Blaue Reiter and was a good experience overall, even if a two day conference is not exactly what you would want to follow two days of very little sleep. But my favorite parts of the weekend had less to do with the conference and more with the people.

The final event of the conference was a re-created performance of a Kandinsky opera called The Yellow Sound. Predictably, it was weird, with "giants" who looked like yellow versions of The Silence from the recent season of Doctor Who. But it was held in the East Room at the Tate Modern, a corner room on the north east corner of the building. Going to the windows you could look down and see the Globe theatre, and looking out you could see this:



After the performance we retreated to the cafe, ordered a couple bottles of wine, and did what we always do: talked about art and language and enjoyed the view until they kicked us out of the museum. Even though we were so tired that Anna from Munich kept trying to speak to me in German, and Philipos started calling people by the wrong name, it was a perfect night.