Matilda the musical is hoping to follow in the successful footsteps of other hit London shows to successfully transfer to Broadway, including One Man, Two Guvnors; Mamma Mia!; Billy Elliot and The 39 Steps. Already the Broadway show is playing to 99.4% capacity audiences with advance bookings for tickets in excess of £10 million.
The Roald Dahl adapted stage musical has enjoyed fantastic success at the Cambridge theatre in London starring Bertie Carvel as the sadistic headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. Bertie Carvel will be reprising his role as Miss Trunchbull on Broadway, he said: “The challenge, and delicious fun, was trying to find the deeply buried, vulnerable little girl inside this gorgon. She’s not just a lampoon of an authority figure to be mocked. She’s a psychopath.” Carvel has won huge critical acclaim and audience plaudits in the role of the intimidating dragon of a Headmistress.
Comedian Tim Minchin’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel recently opened in New York and is hoping to repeat the enormous success the show has enjoyed in the West End. The directors have resisted the temptation to ‘Americanise’ the show preferring to stick to the London version of the show.
The terrifying figure of headmistress Agatha Trunchbull is created in the show by using an elaborate costume. Bertie Carvel revealed “It’s a kind of foam and leather corset, with individually sculptured layers: the overdeveloped trapezium, the hump, the impressive bosom gone south. It made many people’s lives a misery to get right. But I get to put it on and stand in the mirror and frown at myself until I feel that Agatha and I have become one”.
Matilda is still playing at the Cambridge theatre in London and will soon be joined in the West End by another Roald Dahl inspired musical, the stage adaptation of his book Charlie and the Chocolate factory, which opens at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane from May 2013.
Bertie Carvel said: “Matilda is such a classic underdog story, to have a little girl who is bullied by grown-ups and watch her so thoroughly outwit the baddies.”
The same could be said for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Charlie himself succeeding against all the odds. It is another classic Roald Dahl tale and with the award-winning James Bond director, Sam Mendes, at the helm it promises to be every bit as successful as Matilda the musical has been. Buy tickets for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory show in London. Tickets for Charlie and the Chocolate have been selling extraordinarily fast and already many performances are sold-out, even before the typical marketing and advertising campaigns have kicked in so expect to see full houses at the Theatre royal Drury Lane which all bodes well for London’s West End.
If Charlie and the Chocolate factory the musical enjoys as much success in the West End as Matilda, then expect Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to follow in Matilda’s steps all the way to Broadway.
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