Dennis Kelly

but which contained a description of extreme violence that will stay with me, I think, forever, really.

And that was Dennis Kelly's Girls and Boys, which opened at the Royal Court with Carey Mulligan.

It's a hard play to talk about because should anybody ever wish to go and see it, it's meaning and its shock value lie in the fact that you don't know where you are at the beginning and you end up at the end somewhere you just didn't expect to be but it's essentially a monologue of love it's a woman talking about her family and as the play progresses you realize something awful has happened and there are quite a lot of plays that work on that um Dynamic, like Sea War by Simon Stevens, which we talked about before, which is an amazing play.

What was extraordinary about Girls and Boys, I thought, was that...

Kelly has got this bleakness.

He's an extraordinary writer, Dennis Kelly, you know, man who wrote Matilda.

Always have to remind myself that.

But his own vision is incredibly bleak, I think.

Yeah, I think lots of people have connections to it and there's this whole subcategory of people who have a relationship with Matilda that is about neurodivergence because I somehow for various reasons wrote in my songs.

It's in the DNA of the story and it's in Dennis' script but But really you get to know characters in musicals when they sing because that is what the song is.

It's a monologue.

It's to the audience and it's interior thoughts.

And I just remember sobbing when I heard that line.

partly because it was said against a backdrop of understanding the imperfection of the artist, and yet what he gave, expressing his gift in that way.

So Dahl gave us all that stuff, it ain't a musical until you give it to Dennis Kelly and Matthew Orchis and Hugh Vanstone and Peter Daly and Chris Nightingale and like these weird nerds who figure out how to bring their childhoods and put it on the stage.

I'm just hearing that

Yeah.

And that continued for a long time until Dennis Kelly, who's an amazing writer, I don't know if you know his stuff, he's kind of, he wrote Matilda the Musical with Tim Minchin, and he wrote Pulling With Me, my first sitcom, and Utopia, and loads of amazing stuff.

We started writing together, we were in a youth theater, and then we decided, we made each other laugh a lot, and so we started writing sketches, and that's when we went out and started filming things, applying for kind of writing competitions.

And then we won this BBC New Comedy Award.

are three single women who were living in London, but without any of the good bits, I suppose.

I spent my late 20s, early 30s doing jobs I didn't like in unsuccessful relationships and low-level accommodation.

And so did Dennis Kelly.

So we thought, let's write about that.

Children and adults alike will be thrilled and delighted by the story of this special girl with an extraordinary imagination.

With music and lyrics by Tim Minesini and book by Dennis Kelly, Matilda is directed at Pentacle Theatre by Robert Sahlberg.

Actors interested only in the role of Matilda should submit a video audition by November 1st.

All other roles will be cast at auditions happening by appointment on November 11th or 12th.

For my generation, it's quite nostalgic.

because we might have grown up with a musical and 15 years later you know the story the themes hit differently and I think for like my parents generation who might not really have much relationship with Matilda I think what I really want to remind them of is that it's a bloody good piece of theater like it's really well made it's you know it is the royal shapes of the company who made it it's made with so much craft and love um and there's some real darkness in it as well i don't know if you've read any of dennis kelly the playwright's other plays he's he's an incredibly interesting choice to be the the writer of matilda because his other plays are so adult in their themes and traces of that come into Matilda and it speaks to our politics right you know this idea of particularly your guys politics to be honest you know what happens when you have a leader who is incredibly potentially flawed I don't know your politics but you know someone like But it's got some great themes about standing up to authority.

What happens if the person in charge is not necessarily representing everyone else in terms of their opinions? I think that's a fascinating area for exploration for Matilda.

Besides the Catholic influencers and stuff like that, how else are you hoping to kind of start bringing more adults to see Matilda just on their own?

The Irish writer, producer, and actress has found humor in virtually every stage of life.

There was the coming-of-age comedy, Pulling, that she created with Denis Kelly.

Her and Rob Delaney examined marriage on Catastrophe.

She created a series on parenting in Motherland, although she did not star in that.

The show is set to open March 24th.

It's going to actually be the first revival since the 1994 production, which starred Victor Garber, Bebe Neuwirth, and Dennis Kelly.

And that's your news.

Ashley and

Paramount, which, as you know, is in the news for lots of other reasons, has closed deals with Pitt and Berger for its sequel.

Dennis Kelly will write the screenplay, while Pitt, Dee Dee Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner will produce through Plan B Entertainment, which...

Whenever I read that, I always read it as like the morning after pill company.

I'm like, I don't know if I would name my company.