8 Differences Between “Matilda: The Musical” and the Original Roald Dahl Book

In the movie musical, Matilda is an only child, disappointing her father, who wanted a son so badly that he frequently addresses her as “boy” and “son.” In the book (and the 1996 non-musical version of the movie, pictured above), however, she has an older brother, Michael, who takes after their terrible parents.

While the book version of Matilda is a brainy, precocious bookworm, the movie musical adds a totally new storyline about the stories she imagines. Throughout the musical, Matilda narrates a story to her friend, the librarian Mrs. Phelps, about an acrobat and an escapologist. In her story, the couple performs increasingly dangerous feats to distract from their grief over not having a child, then cancel their most dangerous performance yet when the acrobat reveals that she’s pregnant.

Unfortunately, the acrobat’s jealous, vicious stepsister reveals a contract that forces them to perform the stunt anyway. It almost works, until an accident at the end causes the acrobat to fall, and she only lives long enough to give birth to their daughter. Eventually, their daughter winds up being “raised” and tormented by her evil step-aunt, who, it’s implied, also “got rid of” the escapologist, who was trying to rescue his daughter. At first, Matilda’s story seems like a way of processing the horrible things in her own life, but it is later revealed that her story has a connection to another main character…

The book sketches in some of Miss Honey’s backstory, revealing that she is actually the niece of the sadistic headmistress Miss Trunchbull, and that Trunchbull has been bullying her and stealing her inheritance from her late father, Dr. Magnus Honey. In the musical, her story gets a different twist. Her father was not a doctor, but an escapologist, and it turns out that Matilda has actually been telling the story of Miss Honey’s family all along.

After a reign of terror, Miss Trunchbull is finally defeated thanks to Matilda’s powers. In both the book and the movie, Matilda uses her telekinesis to manipulate a piece of chalk, writing on the blackboard, and threatening Miss Trunchbull by pretending to be the ghost of Magnus Honey. In the book, Trunchbull faints in fear and then flees, but in the movie musical, Matilda takes it a step further, making a bunch of chains move around and coalesce into a “ghostly” figure to chase Trunchbull.

The original book version of Mrs. Wormwood has a bingo obsession, but in the movie musical, she’s a ballroom dance devotee instead.

In fact, in the stage musical that inspired the movie musical, she has an entire ballroom dance number, called “Loud,” and a subplot with a dance partner named Rodolfo, which were cut for the movie adaptation.

In any version, Matilda’s parents extremely selfish and not very bright, which gets them into trouble. In the book, Mr. Wormwood has been selling stolen cars and eventually has to flee to Spain to avoid the police, who have caught on. In the movie musical, he gets in over his head by conning a bunch of customers into buying old, run-down cars, only to discover those customers are actually the Russian mafia. They’re none too pleased with his fraud, again forcing the family to flee the country.

After Trunchbull’s hasty exit, the school’s future looks brighter, but it pans out differently in the two versions. In the book, Miss Honey gets a letter from a lawyer telling her that her inheritance is safe, including her father’s money and house, while the deputy headmaster, a man named Mr. Trilby, takes over as (a much more benevolent) headmaster. In the movie musical, Mr. Trilby doesn’t exist at all, and Miss Honey is more active in taking control of the school away from Trunchbull. Miss Honey ends up being the new headmistress, applying her kinder teaching approach to the whole school (this is also how the 1996 movie ended.)

At the end of the book, Matilda returns home from a visit with Miss Honey to find her family scurrying to flee the country before the police catch up to her father. Matilda says she doesn’t want to go and asks Miss Honey if she can stay with her instead. In the movie musical, Miss Honey first broaches the subject, to Matilda’s delight. Both versions end the same way, though: with Miss Honey and Matilda making a new life, away from their terrible pasts, together.