Matilda takes a children's novel and stages it with an unusual amount of bite. The story is about a girl with terrible parents and a worse headteacher who works out that being clever is a form of power, and the adaptation keeps Dahl's cruelty rather than sanding it down. Adults tend to leave having enjoyed it more than they expected to, which is not the usual pattern for a family musical.
Tim Minchin's songs are the reason. They are wordy, rhythmically awkward on purpose and often very fast, delivered in large part by a child cast, and a lot of the humour lives in lyrics that go past quickly. This has a practical consequence: if you are sitting a long way back in a big house, or if English is not your first language, you will get more from a seat with clear sightlines and good sound than from a bargain seat at the extreme side or the back of an upper tier.
Two things about the staging are worth knowing before you choose seats. The set is built around the audience's eyeline in a way that rewards sitting centrally, and several of the biggest moments happen at floor level and in front of the proscenium rather than upstage. Extreme side seats in any house lose more of this than the seating map suggests.
The title role and the other children rotate between performers, as they must, since child performance is limited by law in most countries where the show plays. Nobody can tell you in advance which child is scheduled for a given performance, and productions do not guarantee it.
Runtime is around two hours and forty minutes with an interval. Most productions suggest it suits children of around six and up, less because of content than because of length and the pace of the lyrics. PickStub is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with the producers of Matilda The Musical, the Roald Dahl estate, or the theatres staging it.