‘Matilda The Musical’
Directed by Matthew Warchus
Streaming via Netflix

It must be a hoary truism that great, even beloved actors absolutely adore playing the most reprehensible characters imaginable. “Matilda,” the children’s novel by Roald Dahl, has served more than once as a vehicle of choice for esteemed thespians set on transforming themselves into the extremely unlovable.  

In 1996, the highly respected Danny DeVito co-produced and directed the first film adaptation of “Matilda,” apparently so he could award himself the plum role of Harry Wormwood, Matilda’s father, and cast his wife, the equally acclaimed Rhea Pearlman, opposite him as Zinnia Wormwood, perhaps the two shallowest, most idiotic and unsympathetic parents in all of literature.  

Now there’s a new film of “Matilda” — a musical, this time — and no less than Emma Thompson is top-billed. That’s right, one of the great actors of our time, the winner of two Oscars and innumerable other awards, has gleefully stepped into the hobnailed boots of the tyrannical, positively satanic headmistress, the dreaded Miss Trunchbull. 

The entire cast of characters is the creation of Dahl (1916-90). A veteran World War II flying ace, Dahl began his career in children’s fiction by writing about gremlins, those mischievous supernatural imps who bedevil pilots.  At least half a dozen of his works are considered classics, and have been much adapted for screen and stage, particularly the 1964 “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Willy Wonka has become, like Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan, an icon who everybody knows. 

In 2007 when hundreds of us reporter types stood outside the Apple Store on New York City’s Fifth Avenue covering the launch of the iPhone, I was neither the first nor the last to compare the moment to a similar scene in the movie version, “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

Dahl became perhaps the most successful writer of fantasy for young readers after J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and J.K. Rowling — Brits all. Give credit to Dahl for at least for using his actual name rather than initials, even if it seems like he might have done so merely to frustrate Americans who keep trying to to spell his Christian name with an “N” in the middle of it.  

Despite all the obvious heart, soul, and moral values in his stories, Dahl himself was apparently a miserable bloke. My editor, Robert Gottlieb, who worked with Dahl in the 1970s, described him as “so demanding and rude that no one wanted to work with him.” Still, as Bob wrote in his memoir, eventually, he actually “came to enjoy spending time with him.”

Published in 1988, two years before the author’s death, “Matilda” was one of his last stories, and its cleanly drawn characters were, according to Dahl lore, drawn from actual people he had known. There’s the innocent but hardly Pollyanna heroine Matilda; the dim-witted, egomaniacal, anti-intellectual parents Harry and Zinnia; the warm and wonderful teacher Miss Honey; and the sadistic Miss Trunchbull, who makes Herman Goering look like Mary Poppins.

The first major adaptation was the Danny DeVito film in 1996, in which the story lost its British accent and the parents are shallow, brainless, status-seeking Americans rather than cockney twits; why Trunchbull, played by Pam Ferris, still sounds typically English is never explained. “Matilda the Musical,” with libretto by Dennis Kelly and songs by Tim Minchin, opened on the West End in 2011, and then, starting two years later, ran 1,555 performances on Broadway.  The London production is running to this day.

Whereas most novels are trimmed for dramatic adaptations — a great deal of the plot of “Wicked” didn’t make it into the show — “Matilda” is generally expanded. The DeVito movie adds an extra scene where Matilda spooks Miss Trunchbull, as well as a side plot about Mr. Wormwood being stalked by FBI agents, one of whom is a post-”Pee Wee Herman” Paul Reubens. The stage musical gets much deeper into the relationship of Miss Honey and the Trunchbull, adding a whole extra story set in a circus that involves a female acrobat and an “escapologist,” which we at first assume is entirely a product of Matilda’s imagination.

The new film version, produced by Netflix and directed by Matthew Warchus, is based on the Minchin-Kelly musical, though it drops the character of Matilda’s older brother. The success of this film is driven by the ingenuity of Mr. Minchin in terms of using music, lyrics, and dance not to soften the extremes of Dahl’s characters and plot points, but to enhance them.  

Granted, we already have the most diabolical school administrator, the most virtuous little girl, the most supportive instructress, and the most brain-dead parental units, but Minchin’s songs make them even more so — and in the process they make the whole shebang even more Dahl-ish.  

The score is first-rate theater music. Matilda’s “Naughty” is the perfect expression of a sweet little girl who decrees it a moral imperative to play hideous pranks on her despicable father. “The Hammer” is chanted like a school anthem or even a mock hymn, British schoolchildren somberly intoning a demented bizarro version of Blake’s “Jerusalem.” “When I Grow Up” is pure sweetness, bereft of irony or sarcasm, with harmonies reminiscent of late Beatles-era Paul McCartney.   

Whether played by Ms. Ferris in 1996, or Bertie Carvel in the stage musical as a drag gorgon, and now Ms. Thompson on screen, the pedophobic Trunchbull is perhaps the most horrifying haridan ever to haunt the musical stage. Her manifesto, “The Smell of Rebellion,” is an especially heinous expression of pure villany, along the lines of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” in “The Little Mermaid,” or even Sweeney Todd’s “Epiphany.” 

We respond to “Matilda” — in every iteration — because Dahl was onto a larger truth. Much as I liked “Mean Girls” and “Heathers” (especially in their musical incarnations), I grow weary of stories about children menacing or bullying other children. Even Hortensia, the closest thing to a bully at Crunchem Academy, is helpful and protective of the smaller children, shielding them as best she can from the demonic fury of the Trunchbull. 

Dahl makes it plain that the major problems that kids have to worry about are invariably foisted upon them by the adult world. Matilda Wormwood knows this better than anybody.