August | 2015 | Jo Litson: Scene and Heard

Lyric Theatre, August 20

Matilda’s “revolting children”. Photo: James Morgan

Her philistine parents consider her “a jumped-up little germ” and “a good case for population control”. To her monstrous headmistress Miss Trunchbull she’s “a maggot” like all children.

But a brave, book-loving, five-year old genius called Matilda Wormwood has been winning the hearts and minds of musical theatre audiences in London, New York and beyond, not to mention rave reviews and umpteen awards.

Based on Roald Dahl’s book, the hotly anticipated Royal Shakespeare Company production of Matilda The Musical, which premiered in 2010, has finally arrived in Sydney, triumphantly weaving such a powerful spell it has us rejoicing with its “revolting children”.

Written by Dennis Kelly (book) and Tim Minchin (music and lyrics), Matilda is one of the most thrilling new musicals of recent years: a show that isn’t afraid to be dark, sophisticated or smart, while at the same time pulsing with a gloriously funny streak of child-like, anarchic naughtiness.

There is a perfect synthesis between Kelly’s book and Minchin’s lyrics, both brilliant, which share a similar cheeky irreverence and wickedly clever wit but which also touch the heart without becoming sentimental.

The opening number, Miracle, instantly illustrates how wonderfully well Kelly and Minchin have been able to work together, setting the show up perfectly. Not only do we have Dahl’s tart observation about how most parents think their own children are little angels but a flashback to Matilda’s birth and a quick summation of her less than rosy situation. Interwoven through one song, it’s a very clever opening.

Celebrating the joy and solace of books as well as the power of words and the imagination, Kelly has added a new narrative strand to the show in which Matilda tells a story about an escapologist and an acrobat.

This beautifully staged tale (which uses dolls and shadow puppetry as well as actors) proves magically prophetic, filling out Miss Honey’s story and revealing Matilda’s yearning for loving parents without spelling it out.

Minchin’s charmingly offbeat, catchy songs are refreshingly different to so many of the pop scores we hear in contemporary musical theatre. Highlights include the bittersweet “When I Grow” in which the children sail out over the audience on swings, the uplifting, bolshie “Revolting Children” and the moving ballad “My House”, exquisitely sung by Elise McCann.

“When I Grow Up”. Photo: James Morgan

Matthew Warchus’s superlative production (staged here by associate director Nik Ashton) is a total delight. Rob Howell’s ingenious design integrates alphabet tiles and building blocks throughout the set. He has a wonderful way with colour, contrasting the garishly bright home and costumes of the Wormwoods with the forbidding grey of the school, while the drag costume he gives Miss Trunchbull with hunched shoulders and pendulous bosom is both terrifying and a hoot.

Peter Darling’s energetic choreography, which draws on kickboxing and karate, has the spot-on feel of kids stomping in the playground. His routine for School Song – in which two school boys (played here by adults) leap around in fleet-footed fashion up and down the school gate as alphabet blocks are pushed into place through the metal grille – is breathtaking. The kids powering downstage during “Revolting Children” is exhilarating.

The show makes huge demands on its child actors, particularly the young girl playing Matilda. Bella Thomas (aged 11) who starred on opening night (in a role she shares with Molly Barwick, Sasha Rose and Georgia Taplin) is extraordinary, giving Matilda a touchingly solemn yet feisty, determined demeanour. Her singing voice, meanwhile, is strong, true and clear.

Bella Thomas as Matilda singing “Quiet”. Photo: James Morgan

But all the children are great, as are the adult cast. James Millar is sensational as the dreaded Miss Trunchbull, deploying an alarming bosom and killer comic timing to perfection. He marries an almost psychopathic stillness with sudden, throwaway jauntiness in a way that is both hilarious and frightening.

Elisa McCann is radiant as Matilda’s kind, put-upon teacher Miss Honey, Daniel Frederiksen and Marika Aubrey are very funny as Matilda’s appalling parents and Cle Morgan exudes oodles of exuberant warmth as the librarian Mrs Phelps.

Appealing to both adults and children, Matilda is a gem of a show with a wonderful heart and message about standing up to bullies and fighting for what is right. It’s also a love letter to joy of words. Pure magic.

Matilda The Musical is now playing at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre. Bookings: www.ticketmaster.com.au

A version of this review ran in the Sunday Telegraph on August 23

Old Fitz Theatre, July 30

Belinda Giblin as Stella Goldschlag. Photo: Marnya Rothe

Gail Louw’s one-woman play Blonde Poison tells the confronting, true story of Stella Goldschlag, taking its title from the nickname the Nazis gave her.

Also known as “the blonde ghost”, Berlin-born Goldschlag was 18 when World War II began. Very beautiful with blonde hair and blue eyes, she looked Aryan but was actually Jewish. Living illegally in war-torn Berlin, she was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. In order to save herself and her parents from Auschwitz, she agreed to become a “greifer” or “catcher”, informing on Jews in hiding. Because of her, up to 3000 Jews are said to have been sent to concentration camps.

The play requires an extraordinary performance to keep you riveted for its entire 90 minutes – and it gets it from Belinda Giblin in a production currently playing at Sydney’s Old Fitz Theatre, produced by Adam Liberman in association with Red Line Productions.

Louw is a British playwright, whose grandparents died during the Holocaust. She based her play largely on a book by David Wyden, a journalist who had been smitten with Goldschlag at school and interviewed her when she was in her 70s. Wyden’s family was able to escape Berlin in 1937 and go to the US, but Goldschlag’s family didn’t have the means or the connections.

In the play, Goldschlag – now living as a recluse – is waiting nervously for Wyden to arrive and begins going over in her mind all the questions he is bound to ask about her life.

Louw has Goldschlag tell her story in fairly straightforward fashion but she doesn’t dodge the moral complexities, with our sympathy shifting back and forth. Jennifer Hagan directs the play with understated sensitivity, eschewing bells and whistles and Giblin gives one of the performances of her career with an emotionally layered portrayal that is full of nuance and complexity.

Brought up to think of herself as “a princess” by her father and beloved Mutti, Giblin portrays a vain woman with a strong sense of entitlement and a keen awareness of her sexual power. At the same time, she is a victim of her time and place, who makes difficult choices in order to survive.

At times, we understand and empathise with Goldschlag; at other times we are taken aback by her ruthlessness and her candid admission that she loved the power and privilege her acts of betrayal conferred on her. One particular incident, where she nearly seals the fate of a Jewish boy in the Hitler Youth, and describes the thrill she experiences is particularly unsettling. Giblin plays it all beautifully without ever judging the character. She also conveys Goldschlag’s heartbreak when her daughter is taken away from her as a baby and later rejects her.

Belinda Giblin. Photo: Marnya Rothe

Derrick Cox has designed a small, shabby apartment that makes for a convincingly naturalistic setting in which a basket of rag dolls sits oddly for such a stylish, tough woman: a sad, almost pathetic, substitute for or reminder of the daughter she lost.

The play itself is a bit long-winded and repetitive and could easily be trimmed. However, Hagan’s production (with sound by Jeremy Silver and lighting by Matthew Tunchon) is powerfully evoked. But it’s Giblin’s portrayal of a flawed human being that makes the play soar, keeping us gripped, fascinated, appalled and moved as we contemplate what we would have done in her place.

Blonde Poison runs at the Old Fitz Theatre, Woolloomooloo until August 15. Bookings: http://www.oldfitztheatre.com

Jo Litson: Scene and Heard

Articles and reviews about the performing arts in Sydney – and occasionally beyond.

Monthly Archives: August 2015

Matilda The Musical

Blonde Poison