Listen up maggots. 29 pupils spanning Classes 3 - 11 bring you the adapted stage show of Roald Dahl's classic novel Matilda that bans adults from the cast.
We are an outlier in the independent education sector in the capital. We don't have a swimming pool, rugby pitches or even a uniform for that matter. 5yo Matilda and her school friends Bruce, Lavender, Nigel, Hortensia, Eric, Tommy, Alice and Amanda, will be kitted out by the Handwork Department, where pupils learn to cross-stitch, knit socks, tailor a piece of clothing.
What we have is the creative arts woven into every discipline of the Waldorf curriculum. The theatre sits at the heart of the campus, and is as old as theacclaimed actor, Sam Heughan, (Outlander, Roald Dahl's biopic To Olivia), whose experience of performing The Prodigious Snob during his years from 1993 - 1998 inspired a career in the industry. As well as its most prominent actor, it has nurtured the early talents of professional actors such as Fiona Oliver-Larkin (Salt, and co-director at Voice Box, one-half of feminist theatre SALTYDOLLS) and James Cumming, who wrote a play (Intrusion) that premiered at the Fringe, as well as an award-winning short film (What I Think Of You); has founded a theatre company, Locked In Thought, which will present Reasons To Be Pretty, in April, 2026; and co-directing Matilda with Eilidh Smith. (View Alumni Wall)
Born 110 years ago in 1916, Roald Dahl lived in not that dissimilar times to now regarding school starting age (though a revolt is unfolding in the aftermath of the pandemic). By the time the book was published in 1988, school was compulsory from September after they turned 4yo. Matilda's parents forgot to enrol her in school for six months, by that time she was five years old. Parents of our cast consciously chose for their offspring to begin once an additional candle was squidged into their birthday cake.
ESS is a decidedly different school from Crunchem Hall Primary. Here, pianos adorn classrooms. Hand-drawn posters are blu-tacked onto windows and walls for plays, ceilidhs, art exhibitions. The only 'rule' exhibited tells grown-ups to put their phones away. Most importantly, creative arts are woven into every academic discipline, even the sciences; alongside working on and performing pieces that range from fairytales to Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare, in French, German and English, from the age of six.
Teenagers will perform The Comedy of Errors in February and Around The World In 80 Days in March. But not before the large-scale performance of Matilda The Musical JR, involving pupils aged 8 - 17, in three public performances today to the whole school and the public in the evening; followed tomorrow by an evening performance; and the final matinee on Saturday at 2.30pm (Doors open 2pm).
Months before playwright Dennis Kelly's book of the full professional musical premiered, The Scotsman awarded his work, Orphans, a Fringe First award. He wrote the Matilda script, despite having no previous experience of musicals.
It was in the Edinburgh Fringe four years before where composer, Tim Minchin, cut his cloth as a comedian, going from poor, renter and childless, to a father, international favourite funny ginger, with an income putting a roof over his family's head, cementing the decision in 2006 to emigrate from Australia to the UK, his country of birth. The same year Jeanie O'Hare, commissioning dramaturg for Royal Shakespeare Company, approached Kelly to turn Dahl's story into a stage production. (Minchin would get on board two years later).
The musical that revels in the anarchy of childhood has since won over ten fistfuls of Oliviers, Tonys and other esteemed awards, been turned into a PG-rated film, and adapted to a U-rated stage version for school and amateur youth theatre children to perform, who are strictly under 18. It became licensable by Music Theatre International during the 10th anniversary of the 2 hour 45 min version in February 2020. A month later, every school in Scotland was closed due to covid. It will be the first time ESS presents the stage show as a large-scale musical, following Beauty & the Beast in 2025.
Pupils at Edinburgh Steiner School, who have been rehearsing at the weekends and twice a week after school since September, will present the one-hour version to an audience of 300. The weekend matinee and two evening performances promise to have an abundance of Bruce's Chocolate Cake in the interval, homemade by parents, who we can only hope are nothing like Mr & Mrs Wormwood.
