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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: You come, too

April 12, 2013 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review Matilda and The Last Five Years. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
The makers of “Matilda” have done the impossible–triumphantly. They’ve taken Roald Dahl’s popular children’s novel and turned it into a big-budget musical that is true enough to the book to satisfy its youthful readers, yet sophisticated enough to delight childless adults who normally wouldn’t be caught dead partaking of such kid stuff. It’s smart, sweet, zany and stupendous fun.
Originally published in 1988, “Matilda” is a revenge fantasy for eggheads, the story of a five-year-old prodigy whose favorite books include “Crime and Punishment,” “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “The Cat in the Hat.” Alas, Matilda’s aggressively anti-intellectual parents (Gabriel Ebert and Lesli Margherita) and stormtrooper-like headmistress (played in drag by Bertie Carvel) hate books and all who read them. Not to worry, though, for Miss Honey (Lauren Ward), a poor but kindly schoolteacher who fully appreciates her young charge’s talents, which turn out to include telekinesis, helps Matilda vanquish the wicked and live happily ever after.
Dennis Kelly, who wrote the book, has turned Mr. Dahl’s novel, parts of which are light on dialogue, into a fully stageworthy musical in which everything is shown rather than told. Tim Minchin’s riotously eclectic score skitters unpredictably from pop to jazz to semi-Sondheim to good old-fashioned razzmatazz….
1.164163.jpg“The Last Five Years,” Jason Robert Brown’s two-handed musical about a young couple (Adam Kantor and Betsy Wolfe) who can’t make a go of their marriage, has returned to New York after 11 years in a revival immaculately staged by the author. Every aspect of this Off-Broadway production, from the strongly sung performances of Mr. Kantor and Ms. Wolfe to the playing of the six-person band, is guaranteed to satisfy.
Whether you’ll want to see “The Last Five Years” depends on what you think of its subject matter. Mr. Brown freely admits that the show was inspired by the breakup of his own marriage to an actress. Jamie, the “hero,” is an up-and-coming novelist whose burgeoning success outstrips that of the neurotic Cathy, who is unable to come to terms with the awkward fact that his book is getting reviewed by John Updike in the New Yorker while she appears in second-rate summer theater in Ohio. So what does he do? Naturally, he dumps her…
What redeems “The Last Five Years,” up to a point, is Mr. Brown’s score. The music, which splits the difference between Hall & Oates and Ned Rorem, is better than the words, which could do with a medium-stiff dose of ironic detachment, but they fit together so comfortably as to overcome all objections–save to the premise of the show itself….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
The original West End production of Matilda performs “Naughty” on last year’s Olivier Awards telecast:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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