“Discipline! Discipline! For children who aren’t listening!” Trunchbull croons into a bullhorn while forcing her charges through a muddy obstacle course littered with barbed wire and explosives. Her school’s motto is “Bambinatum est magitum” - “Children are maggots” - and its headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull (a go-for-broke Emma Thompson), is the type of monster who gets introduced chin hair first, the camera then tiptoeing backward to gawk at her broken capillaries and drab olive dress, padded at the shoulders and bosom until she resembles a tank. Matilda’s parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough) are dimwits and cheats. When Weir, just 11 when she filmed the movie, narrows her blue eyes and sings, “Sometimes, you have to be a little bit naughty,” you believe she’s capable of conquering anyone who blocks her path. His writing forever burned with a youthful sense of injustice, and among the many smart decisions the director Matthew Warchus and the writer Dennis Kelly have made in adapting “Matilda” for the stage, and now screen, is reimagining their title character, played with empathetic ferocity by Alisha Weir, as a bit of a proto-Dahl herself, a bright child bursting with stories that take aim at the adults who try to trod on her intelligence. The novel was Dahl’s righteous payback for his own British boarding school education where the instructors freely beat the students and slipped slivers of soap into boys’ mouths at night if they snored. Roald Dahl was 72 when he published his tale of a telekinetic girl genius avenging herself upon on a school headmaster who shot-puts kids out of the classroom window.

When she meets her teacher, Miss Honey, Matilda becomes even more inspired.Bitterness never tasted so sweet as it does in “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical,” a jolt of sour candy guaranteed to make you grin. Wormwood love watching TV and questionable money-making schemes, Matilda is more interested in her beloved books.

Matilda the Musical is based on Roald Dahl's iconic book about Matilda Wormwood, the young girl with a sharp mind and a vivid imagination who is alienated by her own parents.

Newsweek has the full list of the release times across the globe below:įans in the UK and Ireland will need to wait until summer 2023 for Matilda the Musical to land on Netflix as the movie is receiving a full cinema release there. Emma Thompson stars as the villainous Miss Trunchbull in 'Matilda the Musical,' based onRoald Dahl's 1988 book.

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