We had heard from its showing in Stratford Upon Avon last year that Matilda the Musical was rather special but I didn’t expect to be so blown away by this delightful production about the precocious little girl who loves books and is born into a family of book hating telly addicts. Delightful as ten year old Eleanor Worthington Cox is as Matilda, it is Bertie Carvel as the wicked headmistress Miss Trunchbull who stole the show for me.

It all goes wrong for Matilda at birth when her father, the second hand car dealer Mr Wormwood (Paul Kaye), refuses to acknowledge that she is a girl and calls her boy throughout. Her mother (Josie Walker) is obsessed with ballroom dancing competitions with her dance partner the slimy Rudolpho (Gary Watson).

Matilda discovers she can be naughty and substitutes her father’s hair oil for something that turns his hair green. She seeks solace in the stories at the local library with librarian Mrs Phelps (Melanie la Barrie) but is sent to Crunchem Hall Primary School ruled by the vicious ex-hammer thrower, Miss Trunchbull.

Matilda is taught by the shy, self effacing Miss Honey (Lauren Ward) and discovers that one of her stories about a daring Escapologist (Matthew Malthouse) and his wife the Acrobat (Emily Shaw) has a basis in fact. She uses her special powers to frustrate Miss Trunchbull and her favoured punishment for the pupils of confinement in a cell with nails and glass in the walls called “Chokey.” 

The music will have you trying to work out where you have heard those notes before, so I presume what we have here is not derivative but pastiche. The tunes are a play on the style and rhythms of those from Oliver,  Phantom, Les Miserables and many other well known musicals, and even grand opera. They make excellent hearing.

Minchin’s lyrics too are great fun. The choreographed children have been drilled to within an inch of their life and the set piece numbers are startingly good. “When I Grow Up” in which we see smaller children grow up and switch swings with their older counterparts is really impressive and memorable. I loved the gym drill over the gym horse which culminates in Trunchbull athletically skipping with a gymnastic ribbon