Linz premieres Matilda with a 19-child ensemble

The Musiktheater Linz premiered Roald Dahl’s Matilda on Friday, opening its new season with a family musical, ORF reported. The production combined magic, a tyrannical headmistress and a children’s ensemble that impressed with its acting and singing.

Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel about the gifted Matilda was adapted into a musical by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin. Sabine Ruflair wrote the German lyrics. For the Linz production, choreographer Melissa King worked with the Landesmusikschulwerk music school organisation and selected 19 children.

Matilda is played by three actors. At the premiere, Valerie Kloiber won over the audience with her command of the text and strong stage presence. The other children also impressed with lively dance numbers and, especially in the closing song The Revolt, with their singing.

At the centre of the story is the familiar conflict between good and evil, sharpened by Dahl’s dark humour. An exceptionally gifted girl is made to suffer at the hands of exceptionally foolish and authoritarian adults. Matilda repeatedly declares that this is unfair, but finds refuge in the colourful, fantastical world of books. That world gives her the strength to resist the bleak reality around her.

Set designer Stephan Prattes created towering, room-sized book covers. Scenes including the school entrance, classroom and the headmistress’s office, complete with 25 surveillance monitors, were fitted between them. Matilda’s family home and her refuge, the library, appeared on either side of the orchestra pit.

The set and Judith Peter’s costumes were kept in black and white, reinforcing the impression of a joyless daily life. Colour reached the stage and the costumes only when the children began to take control. Until then, they had to stand up to the witch-like headmistress Agatha Trunchbull.

Gernot Romic played the usually male role as a frighteningly cruel, heavily padded tyrant. One younger audience member was visibly frightened and moved from their seat to the lap of an adult companion during the performance.

Patrizia Unger played the kind-hearted teacher Miss Honey, who tries to support the highly gifted Matilda. She cannot prevail against Matilda’s mother or the headmistress, for whom discipline and rules are paramount. Matilda’s telekinetic powers, which cause water glasses to overturn, eventually drive Trunchbull away.

After about two and a half hours, the story ends happily. David Rodriguez-Yanez and Astrid Nowak provided comic relief as Matilda’s foolish parents, while the exceptionally flexible Fabian Koller played Mrs Wormwood’s dance partner.

The premiere moved the audience without becoming sentimental. The acting demands were considerable, although the production could at times have used less text and given more space to its pop and jazz-influenced music. The songs were performed convincingly by the ensemble and by both young and adult soloists, but they were not the evening’s main feature.

Instead, the production’s central message was its tribute to books. The audience responded with a standing ovation, and the many children in the sold-out large hall of the Musiktheater appeared to have understood that message.