Review: MATILDA Is Less Sweet and More Abrasive at ImaginOn

The time lag between what opens on Broadway and what tours at Belk Theater has narrowed in recent years. Likewise, the gap between when the tour comes through town and when local companies get their hands on Broadway properties has also shrunk. With the arrival of MATILDA THE MUSICAL at ImaginOn last weekend just two years after it played Belk Theater, it became apparent that CPCC Summer Theatre, Theatre Charlotte, or Children's Theatre can expect to mount Broadway hits that are just as fresh from their New York runs as the off-Broadway sensations that Actor's Theatre brings us.

Even with this slimmer interval, I fear that Roald Dahl's MATILDA isn't aging gracefully as a children's story at McColl Family Theatre. It returns a bit awkwardly in a year when children are cruelly and inhumanely seized as pawns to discourage asylum seekers from Latin America. You might feel more comfortable with this story than I did just two days after I'd watched a Supreme Court nominee opt for yelling and indignation as his go-to defenses against credible accusations of sexual assault in sworn testimony on Capitol Hill.

I'm not sure which aspect of the Saturday afternoon performance disturbed me more. Was it director Adam Burke and his star, Tommy Foster, conniving to make the evil Miss Trunchbull more realistic than she had been in 2016; or was it the parents in the audience, bringing their anklebiters to the show and ignoring recommendations that it was suitable for 6-and-up? I was surprised - and slightly reassured - when so many stayed after intermission but not at all shocked when the adults sitting next to us fled.

Foster had some comical tricks up his beefy sleeves as the hammer-throwing harridan, turning a couple of unexpected cartwheels and almost executing a split. But Trunchbull's implacable cruelty sometimes verged on rabid, when she unveiled all the "chokey" dungeons reserved for misbehaving and disobedient students at her school or when she pulled the ears of one cowering student about a foot away from his head. Neat technical effects, but perhaps too realistic for comfort.

Dahl wrote his Matilda in 1988, a decade before Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events took off - and before some of the edgier "anti" musicals like Urinetown began to invade Broadway. So his macabre sensibility here became more and more in tune with the times. With all its demonic cogs and gears, HannaH Crowell's set design (fiendishly augmented by Kelly Colburn's projections) brought home to me how Dahl's sensibility had morphed during the quarter of a century following Willy Wonka and his iconic chocolate factory. Nothing particularly sweet here.

Matilda Wormwood certainly had more natural talents and gifts than Charlie Bucket, who snagged the lucky ticket to meet Wonka and taste his chocolate wonders. She is a precocious reader, which disgusts her dimwit parents and astounds Miss Honey, her timorous first grade teacher. As a storyteller, she holds the local librarian spellbound. Pitted against the fearsome, sadistic Trunchbull, Matilda turns out to have a combination of psychic and telekinetic powers that bring her victory - wielded with a sly naughtiness.

You need more than Orphan Annie pluck to play this role, and Allie Joseph has it. She nails Matilda's signature solos, "Naughty" and "When I Grow Up," and she sparkles in the spotlight - Colburn's projections going wild behind her - telling her four-part "Acrobat Story" to Mrs. Phelps, the librarian. There's a touch of grim determination in Joseph's naughtiness that nicely counterbalances the added malignity that Foster brings to Trunchbull. Without too much suspension of disbelief, Joseph also passes for a first grader.

Also supplying counterweight to Trunchbull's regimentation and brutality are Matilda's other tormentors, her nutball parents. Caleb Sigmon gets to do the heavier comedy lifting as Mr. Wormwood, loudly dressed by costume designer Magda Guichard, victimized by Matilda's vicious pranks, and cuckolded by his wife. A crooked used car salesman way beyond his depth in attempting to hoodwink Russian mobsters, Matilda's dad deserves every indignity that comes his way, especially when he tears up his daughter's library book. Yet Sigmon retains a wonderful energy amid all Dad's atrocities, vicissitudes and cluelessness.

Wrapped up in her competitive ballroom dancing - and her sleazy partner Rudolpho (the lithe Paul Montagnese) - Matilda's mom doesn't realize she's nine months pregnant with an unwanted second child when Matilda is born. That's a high level of stupidity to sustain, but Lucianne Hamilton is more than equal to the task as Mrs. Wormwood, particularly when she schools Miss Honey on her philosophy of education.

Absorbing this lecture as well as Miss Trunchbull's tirade, Miss Honey earns the right to sing "Pathetic" as her signature song, yet Bailey Rose builds Honey's strength on stoical acceptance and self-awareness, her warmth toward Matilda counting for far more than her passivity. More comical appreciation comes from Janeta Jackson as Mrs. Phelps, the librarian who listens so raptly to Matilda's acrobat saga.

Dennis Kelly's adaptation of Dahl's novel is admirably intricate and well-crafted, but I find myself less impressed with Tim Minchin's music and lyrics, which might be more palatable with the vitality of Annie or the wit of Avenue Q. You still need to listen - carefully - to the cast album to decipher what the kids' choruses are singing. Whether the older kids are rattling their cages in welcoming the first-graders on their first day or Matilda's class is celebrating victory over Trunchbull, the music sounds a bit savage, as if Annie and her fellow orphans were on a bad acid trip. The transition from Belk Theater to the smaller McColl seemed to augment the abrasiveness.

Yet some of Matilda's classmates do distinguish themselves. Calvin Jia-Hao Mar is consistently adorable as Nigel, who spends much of his time cowering or fainting, whether or not Trunchbull is persecuting him. Ryan Campos is a more formidable martyr as the heroic Bruce, a young glutton who steals a piece of Trunchbull's chocolate cake and is forced to eat the whole thing as his punishment. And though I can't tell you why we're bothered with Matilda's best friend Lavender, Jeannie Ware made her charmingly self-important when we returned from intermission.

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