AMATEUR THEATRE REVIEW: Matilda Jr - The Garrick Playhouse, Altrincham. Manchester.

Tim Minchin's extremely popular musical about a young girl called Matilda, and her escapades and travails at the hands of her crazy family, a psychopathic headmistress, and a love of books, is now so entrenched in children's psyche that I think every preteen and tween will know the plot. Not only a full-scale musical, and now a feature film too, this Junior one-hour version proves to be a very popular and effective product for youngsters to perform and follows on from the "juniorising" of many other favourites and making them available and suitable for young people to perform.

Altrincham Garrick have a large and thriving youth theatre (GAPA), and their many members produce an annual show to the delight of family, friends, and Garrick regulars. Their membership is so large that even utilising a large chorus / ensemble in this show, two alternative casts were given the chance to perform on alternate evenings throughout the week. Doing this also meant that more youngsters were given leading roles too. I was present on Monday evening and so watched Team Roald perform. Therefore all my comments from here on in relate to this production only. Sadly, I did not get to see Team Dahl.

I have seen this Junior version of Matilda many times (and most of them within the last couple of years), and the one thing that truly makes this show is the fact that all the more boring, or less interesting sections of the musical have been shaved away, leaving the main storyline, all the best songs, and a child-friendly hour of full-on, non-stop entertainment for both cast and audience. However, for some reason which remains unclear, that was not the case this evening. What should have been a 60-minute production (or 75 minutes if they wished to include an interval in the middle despite it not being written that way), this particular production lasted almost two hours (including interval). There were many long pauses throughout, and lots of times where we listened to music without anything happening on stage, or a principal cast member was left to stand on the stage simply waiting, killing time, for the right place in the music to start singing etc. I understand that using playback tracks is very much de rigeur with many a youth theatre production these days, but having never experienced these long gaps and passages before, I simply did not understand why they were present in this production. This only lengthened the show in part. What else was present to make the running time of the show almost double, I am at a loss to say; but this was absolutely not the fault of anyone on stage this evening. Scene changes were sluggish and long-winded, and seeing stage management come onto stage and shift things without blackout is never ideal. And utilising a CGI screen to the rear of the stage was not without its problems either! However, the children seemed to cope with these things adroitly, and they all gave sterling performances, acting on full-gas from start to finish.

Esmerelda Maleci made for a lovely Matilda. A strong and sympathetic young actress with strong vocals and good stage presence. Freddie Tickle gave a comedic and forthright turn as Agatha Trunchbull, and was so powerful and nasty at one point, even scared the young eight-year old child seated next to me towards the centre of the auditorium. An empathetic librarian, Mrs. Phelps, was played with confidence by Ella Marie Kleuter, and the more-than-sympathetic school teacher who befriends Matilda, shielding her from the wrath of Trunchbull was another confident and talented performer, Madeleine McCrink. Isla Whitely impressed as Matilda's self-confessed best friend Lavender, whilst Ollie Arora O'Brien brought much comedic campery to bear in his role as ballroom dancing teacher, Rodolpho. The cast completed with Malin Connolly (Acrobat), George Humphrey (Bruce), Charlie Jackson (Escapologist), Alfie Broughall (Mr. Wormwood), Emma Conway (Mrs. Wormwood), and other smaller principal and cameo roles, as well as a rather large group of ensemble / chorus members playing teachers, parents, and schoolchildren throughout. The entire cast gave their alls from start to finish, and obviously had worked very hard bringing their energy, commitment, and enthusiasm to this production making it as enjoyable as it truly was.  Congratulations to all the cast!

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 13.3.23