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Director Matthew Warchus and songwriter Tim Minchin talk Empire through the hell-raising hits of their Roald Dahl adaptation MATILDA THE MUSICAL
[ EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT]
Matilda (Alisha Weir) stands up to Miss Trunchbull (Emma Thompson), the horrible headmistress of Crunchem Hall school.
WITH MATILDA THE MUSICAL, director Matthew Warchus and songwriter-comedian Tim Minchin channelled the dark humour, delicious wordplay and rebellious spirit of Roald Dahl’s beloved kids’ book into a theatrical smash. And they did it all over again on film, re-teaming for a screen adaptation that takes everything that worked on stage and bolsters it with inventive visuals, warbling newborns, and Emma Thompson chucking children over fences. Amid rehearsals for the impending revival of their Groundhog Day musical, Warchus and Minchin sat down with Empire to break down the songs of Matilda The Musical — and how they brought it to the big screen.
Like the stage show, the film begins with ‘Miracle’ — now with the joyous absurdity of singing babies. When did you realise you could do that in this version?
Matthew Warchus: On stage, ‘Miracle’ is built around Matilda’s birth — it’s a nativity of the redeemer. It’s sung by a lot of people who don’t appear in the rest of the film. There were lots of conversations amongst the producers about whether we needed ‘Miracle’, given that it wasn’t necessarily part of the story.
Tim
Minchin: Because you sort of don’t. You wouldn’t do that scene if it didn’t pre-exist.
Warchus: But it’s really important in a musical to start with a burst of energy. I thought, ‘ What can we do that we couldn’t do on stage?’ It occurred to me that we could have babies. It was literally my favourite day of filming. All of these newborn babies came in — more than appear in the film, because we couldn’t film them asleep. They were being fed and sleeping. “Has anyone got a baby that’s awake now? Bring them in!”