Touring ‘Matilda’ true to Dahl’s dark, delightful children’s book Bob Abelman Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal Member, International Association of Theatre Critics One of the four Tony Awards won by "Matilda The Musical" in 2013 was Best Book of a Musical for playwright Dennis Kelly’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s story. The award was well deserved, for it is remarkable how well Kelly’s script captures the darkly satirical, warped and wonderful world created by Dahl – a world vividly imagined during bedtimes in millions of homes where children begged their parents for “just a few more minutes” to finish reading a most remarkable chapter. The story revolves around an ignored 5-year-old girl who uses the power of her mind and her love of books as weapons against ignorant, demoralizing, and vicious adults. Ignoring the advice from her self-absorbed mother that “looks is more important than books,” Matilda’s first impulse – like that of Lemony Snicket’s Violet Baudelaire and J.K. Rowling’s Hermione Granger from more recent novels – is to solve problems with her intelligence, deal with conflict with her imagination, and write her own narrative. “Matilda” is Dahl’s only female-centric work and is told from a child’s perspective. As a result, the world in this musical version of the book – now on national tour and on stage at Playhouse Square – is abundantly playful. And it is comprised of comically exaggerated characters like Matilda’s outrageous parents (the hilarious Quinn Mattfeld and Cassie Silva), the bullying Olympic hammerthrower-turned-psychotic headmistress Miss Trunchbull (a brilliant David Abeles in drag), and the angelic teacher Miss Honey (a silver-throated and absolutely charming Jennifer Blood). Despite Kelly’s best efforts, the writing in the musical also inherits Dahl’s unpolished prose. This makes for some awkward, inconsistent and improbable storytelling which plays better on the page than it does on stage. For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.