Musical: Matilda (ask Tim’s mum for stars)

Annabella Cowley and Elise McCann (pic James Morgan)

From Matilda by Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake
Music and lyrics by Tim Minchin
Book by Dennis Kelly
Directed by Matthew Warchus
Designed by Rob Howell
Orchestration by Christopher Nightingale
Choreography by Peter Darling
Starring Marika Aubrey, Daniel Frederiksen, Elise McCann, James Millar and Annabella Cowley (this performance) as Matilda
Crown Theatre Perth
On sale until May 7

One day, on some blasted heath or in the throat of some volcano, when the final battle between ancient evil and beleaguered humanity is fought, our champions will be a small guy with a ring, a young bloke with a wand and a little girl with books.
It’s going to be tough, but things are going to work out just fine.
The world loves a hero, and when she is little, and feisty, and just a little bit naughty, we love her to bits.
And have done since 1988, when Roald Dahl and his illustrator Quentin Blake put the little girl with a bit of magic about her into a book, and called her, and it, Matilda.
She’s seen the world since then, in print, on radio, on stage and in film, and made pretty much every post a winner. Never more so than her latest manifestation, in the stage musical that’s presently in residence at the Crown Theatre.
If Matilda were a filly, she would be a thoroughbred. By the prolific stage writer Dennis Kelly and the meteoric comedian and songwriter Tim Minchin out of The Royal Shakespeare Company (whose other hits include Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Les Mis and Macbeth) and director Matthew Warchus, now at the helm of of the Old Vic Theatre, her bloodlines are to die for.
Of course it’s conquered everywhere and won everything, and it will run on all the best tracks, probably forever.
And now Minchin, the quintessential boy made good, has brought her home to meet the folks (drinking white wine in the sun, no doubt).
But does it deserve all this adulation? Are the Matildas (tonight it’s Annabella Cowley, for all the world like an even younger Hermione Granger) as pugnacious and precocious, is Miss Trunchbull (James Millar) as hammerthrowingly horrible, is Jenny Honey (Elise McCann) as sweet and Mrs Phelps (Cle Morgan) as emphatic, the Wormwoods (Marika Aubrey and Daniel Frederiksen) as ignorant and gormless, and Rudolpho (Travis Kahn) and Sergei (Stephen Anderson) as Continentally disreputable as we imagined?
Are the kids in the ensemble zinningly zesty? Have Kelly and Warchus done Dahl’s book proud? Are Rob Howell’s alphabet soup set and Famous Five costumes up to Blake’s scratch?
And do Tim Minchin’s songs move us and shake us? Is Miracle as miraculous and Naughty as nice? Does he spell the School Song correct and Smell Rebellion proper? Are they Quiet and Revolting? Are they Here, in the House, all Grown Up?
Well, you sticky-fingered little snotgoblins, yes they are, yes they do, and yes it is.
 
(Oh, and tell Tim’s mum her boy and his mates can have all the stars they want.) 

Music: Jesus Christ Superstar

by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber

Directed by Laurence Connor

With Ben Forster, Tim Minchin, Melanie C, Andrew O’Keefe, Jon Stevens

Perth Arena

May 31 – June 2

Ben Forster and Tim Minchin

While Jesus Christ Superstar boasts the most coherent narrative of the rock operas, and comes with an ambitious political and religious insight that would have put a bonfire under Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for most of the last two thousand years, it’s a bit of a jumble at times. It’s also often very heavy (as in metal), not the easiest musical style to bring to the stage.

That’s why, and despite the mixed reception this production has had in the UK, I think an arena staging is a perfectly appropriate way to present what is essentially a piece of music rather than the score of a theatre piece. And, on those terms, this Superstar does what it sets out to do very well.

It’s an absolutely wonderful coincidence that, forty-one years after Andrew Lloyd Webber won a Tony for Jesus Christ Superstar, Tim Minchin, the Perth kid who dreamed of being in it is, almost certainly, going to get one of his own. And much more besides.

Link here for the complete review in The West Australian. 

In concert: Tim Minchin v WASO

Kings Park
4 March, 2011

Tim Minchin knows that orchestral and rock music are uncomfortable companions; one’s a speedboat, the other an ocean liner, and it’s hard for them to travel in convoy without the former being swamped in the wake of the latter. 

There were times during his Kings Park concert with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra last Friday when the material was at risk of foundering in muddy waves of strings. 

But he’s got the weapons to overcome these problems, and he uses them to great effect during over two hours of favourite and new songs, punctuated by some tight stand-up routines and the occasional obligatory Minchin diatribe.

All in all, a happy homecoming for the Perth boy with everything except shoes!

Read the complete review in The West Australian here