"Matilda the Musical"

by Daniel Ballard • Published on July 23, 2019 • Last modified on July 29, 2019

This past weekend Lubbock Community Theatre’s production of “Matilda the Musical” premiered at LHUCA. The show was written for the stage by Dennis Kelly with music and lyrics by Ted Minchin.

I don’t have an extensive history of studying theatre and do not plan on going into any sort of deep philosophical interpretations of the plot. I have been in a couple of LCT's productions, but I will do my best to remain objective.

That being said, I enjoyed myself immensely.

Director Zachery Kocurek-Gentry did an amazing job of putting this thing together. I had never seen a musical whose cast was primarily made up of children, and I have to say I was impressed with how well it all went. Children, are funny and cute, sure, but they are also notoriously difficult to wrangle. I have two of my own at home that are 5 & 7 and I can’t imagine being able to get a whole room full of them to work together, let alone dance and sing in unison. The choreography by Breana Young is even more impressive considering what she was able to get these kids to do.

Matilda, played here by Signe Elder, tells the story of a young girl who decides to stand up and take destiny into her own hands. The musical, based on the book by Roald Dahl, was filled with wonderful musical performances with musical direction by Annie Burge. Full disclosure, I was in a musical with Annie earlier this year in which I played her ex husband and had to stand around while she sang/yelled at me. That being said, I know the lady can sing amazingly and now I know she can get others to sing great too.

That’s not to say everything was perfect. The energy was a little down during the opening number and a couple of story beats were a little strange to me (I’ve never read the book, and while I have technically seen the movie, it was 20 or so years ago and don’t remember almost anything). These didn’t keep me from enjoying the show, but they are worth mentioning. For example, one of the very few things I remember about the story is that Matilda can do some magic, but that is almost completely left out of this version. I wish that it could have either been played up a bit more or maybe left out all together. None of this is on the local production, that’s a story issue, but if you are going in expecting magic all throughout the play, you might be disappointed.

There were a few times that characters broke the fourth wall, and the effect was very cool. In fact the second act starts with Matilda's father Mr. Wormwood talking directly to the audience. At first I was afraid something was wrong, that is until he brought up an audience member and made fun of her. It led into a fun song with Mr. Wormwood and his son Michael (Noah Obando- hilarious) singing about how amazing television is. The ensemble in that particular song gets to dance around dressed like TV’s. So this production doesn’t take itself too serious and is all the better for it.

My limited experience with local musicals has always been with comedies who were focused almost exclusively on getting the laughs so I was surprised when there were more than a couple really touching parts in “Matilda.” I don’t want to go into specifics, but I found myself close to tears on at least three occasions. The subtle weaving in of these more serious topics was unexpected, but I liked it a lot.

The sets were simple, but worked pretty well. The schoolroom desks were cubes that the children brought on and took off whenever the scenes would change and other set pieces like a TV or small table would be brought on occasionally. Still, I wasn’t ever confused about a location and the simplicity of the sets made the performances the main focus.

The cast is remarkable all around, but the stand outs for me were definitely Elder as Matilda who was able to put so much feeling and emotion and humor into her performance at such a young age; Travis Ty Burge as her father Mr. Wormwood who never fails to land the jokes or deliver outstanding musical performances; and Natalie Stanislaus as Ms. Honey who, as an adult that is actually on Matilda’s side, gives us a small bit of hope for the young girl.

The main storyline dealing with her new school (ugh, Ms. Trunchbull, played by C. David Morrow, is the worst in the best way possible) along with her not-so-great home life is juxtaposed with a story Matilda tells to the local librarian in which an escapologist falls in love with an acrobat. This story that she tells is broken up in pieces throughout the play and I loved the way the themes from both wove in and out of each other making both stronger. Plus, they do this thing where when a character in her story is giving a speech, both the actor playing that part and Matilda would recite the speech together. It was a really neat effect and I applaud the skill it must have taken to get that down.

I could go on about the kids and how great they were (Lavender was so funny! Amanda was so dang cute!) but I should probably stop. “Matilda the Musical” plays for one more weekend at LHUCA here in Lubbock.

More information on Lubbock Community Theatre can be found at lubbockcommunitytheatre.org and be sure to check our schedule for more stories on performing arts.

"Matilda the Musical"

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