Stage Mum

by Lisa Gee

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

  When the Dog Bites

  Something Good

  High on a Hill

  A Crazy Planet Full of Crazy People

  So Long, Farewell

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  About the Book

  When Lisa Gee’s six-year-old daughter, Dora, goes to an open audition for the West End production of The Sound of Music, it’s just a fun way to occupy some time in the Easter holidays. But when Dora unexpectedly lands the role, Lisa soon learns that Dora’s brush with fame has less to do with paparazzi and lucrative paydays and more to do with endless rehearsals and outsize egos.

  Part fairy tale, part cautionary tale, this is the hilarious, engaging account of one child’s step into the limelight. From the initial try-out with over a thousand Von Trapp hopefuls to performing on the London stage with Connie Fisher and an encounter with Julie Andrews, mother and daughter navigate the minefield of rehearsals, auditions and fame. This is a heartwarming glimpse into the sometimes not-so-glamorous world of show business and the delicate balance between being proud and being pushy. Stage Mum is a story for every parent who dreams big and every child who dreams bigger.

  About the Author

  Lisa Gee is the author of Friends: Why Men and Women Are From the Same Planet (Bloomsbury, 2004) and the editor of Bricks Without Mortar: the Selected Poems of Hartley Coleridge (Picador, 2000) and the Orange Prize for Fiction website. She lives in northwest London, with one performing child and her husband, a children’s party entertainer.

  For Dora, just keep being your (wonderful) self.

  For Laurie, thank you for being you.

  For the 2006 first run SoM kids and their parents.

  For Dad, without whom …

  In fond memory of Rebecca Hawes 03/09/1987–19/10/2007

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Big thanks to …

  … Louise Greenberg – much more than just an agent – and her writers’ group; Caroline Gascoigne, Tess Callaway, Emma Mitchell, Rebecca Morrison and everyone at Hutchinson; all the SoM kids and their parents, especially Lynn, Helen, Jane, Wendy, Jackie, Nicky and Graham who allowed me to include information about them and their children and who read and commented on early drafts (as did Dora, Jo Hawes and Russ and his family).

  …Nancy Carlsson-Paige, June Havoc and Tana Sibilio, Catherine Hindson, Liz Jensen and Raphaël Coleman, Sam Keston, Paul Kirkman, Tracy Lane and David Ian, Mark Lester, Paul Morley, Paul Petersen, Russ and Linda Russell, Boyd Tonkin, Mark Williams-Thomas, Sylvia Young and Maggie Melville-Bray who gave their time to be interviewed.

  …Claire Russell who allowed her story to be told.

  … everyone who discussed this book with me, offered comments, ideas and criticisms.

  And, of course, to Dora, Laurie, Dad, Lilli, Auntie Ruth, Nikki and Richard (and also Millie and Freddie) who helped in so many ways.

  The author would like to thank the following for the permission to use copyright material. Cover copy from The Great American Mousical by Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton (Puffin Books 2006). Text copyright © Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton. Illustrations copyright © Tony Walton. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.; Extracts from ‘Celebrity is the Death of Childhood’ copyright © Andrew O’Hagan. Reproduced by permission of Telegraph Media Group Limited; Extracts from The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Von Trapp (Fontana, 1968). Text copyright © Maria Augusta Trapp. Copyright © renewed 1980 by Trapp Family Lodge, Inc. Now published by HarperCollins Publishers (US); Extracts from Early Havoc by June Havoc (Hutchinson & Co. Publishers Ltd, 1960). Text copyright © June Havoc. Reproduced by kind permission of the author; Extracts from Former Child Stars: The Story of America’s Least Wanted by Joal Ryan (ECW Press, 2000). Text copyright © Joal Ryan. Reproduced by kind permission of the author; Extract from the A Minor Consideration website www.minorcon.org © Paul Petersen A Minor Consideration; Extracts from Child Star: An Autobiography by Shirley Temple Black (Headline Book Publishing plc, 1989). Text copyright © Shirley Temple Black; Jo Hawes’ emails © Jo Hawes reproduced by kind permission of the author; Extracts from ‘To Be Or Not To Be?’ by Emily Keston © Emily Keston reproduced by kind permission of the author.

  LET’S START AT THE VERY BEGINNING

  ‘DO YOU THINK Dora might be interested?’ My father was calling from Vienna where he spends several months each year, visiting friends, absorbing culture and going for long walks in the woods. He’d been watching the news (in English) on Sky TV, when an item came on about the open kids’ auditions for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s forthcoming West End production of The Sound of Music. We – Dora, me, my fiancé Laurie and his mother Lilli – were sitting round the dining table in Lilli’s flat a few minutes’ walk from the Bournemouth seafront on a freezing April Fool’s Day. We were debating, heatedly, the relative merits of mushroom vol-au-vents and smoked salmon bagels as wedding fare and wondering whether to brave the wintry weather to build a token sandcastle.

  ‘She’d have to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”,’ my father continued, before telling me where and when she’d have to sing it. He sounded a bit excited by the idea, which means he was actually quite excited. The only time I remember him sounding really excited was when my parents’ house was struck by lightning. Even then his excitement was tinged with regret at having been elsewhere at the time. He had missed the huge bang as the roof exploded, terrifying my mother, who was hiding in a windowless bathroom, clutching the cat.

  The auditions were due to take place at the London Palladium in a few days’ time. It was the Easter holidays and there was nothing else in the diary. ‘Would you like to go?’ I asked Dora. Silly question. Dora, aged six and a bit, already had an impressive track record of volunteering enthusiastically. Naturally she wanted to go.

  It would probably have been more sensible to think about whether I wanted to go before raising the possibility with her. But I didn’t. I was, however, very good about nixing any unrealistic expectations she might have. ‘There’s no way you’ll get a part,’ I told her. ‘We’ll have to queue for hours, you’ll get to sing for one minute and then they’ll say “thank you” and “goodbye”.’

  She still wanted to go, and as we didn’t have any better offers for that day, I Googled the song lyrics, printed them out for her, downloaded the Judy Garland version from iTunes and copied it seven times on to a CD. I sang it to Dora. She put her hands over her ears and cried. I stopped singing and let her practise along with Judy. I told her again and again that there was no way she’d get a part. Was she really, really sure she wanted to go? Yes. Did she understand what I was saying? Yes. But she wanted to have a go and thought it might be fun. I thought it probably wouldn’t be fun. I thought it would be a lot of very boring standing about, followed by her singing two lines while I got to do more boring standing about. Then I would have to comfort a humiliated, fed-up and frustrated child who’d been treated appallingly and dismissed carelessly by a panel of thoughtless Simon Cowell types. But, like many people, I was curious about what it would be like. How would Dora get on? What kinds of children (and parents) would turn out? What would the directors be looking for? Would we get to meet anyone interesting? My curiosity triumphed over my concerns. There is, after all, such a thing as being overprotective, and a day standing in line outside the London Palladium didn’t seem that risky.

  ‘The other parents will be awful,’ advised my sister Nikki, who, having done some performing herself as a child, had taken her very pretty daughter to a couple of modeling castings and
hadn’t enjoyed the experience. ‘They’ll all be from Essex.’ I wasn’t convinced that coming from Essex was, of itself, reprehensible, but without entirely buying into her stereotyping (she does, after all, live in West Hendon), I thought I understood what she was getting at.

  A couple of days before the audition, I went online to see if I could find out any more about what would be happening. What time would we have to be there to make sure Dora wouldn’t miss out? How many children would turn up? Would they have to sing in a particular key? What should she wear? After some serious surfing, I came across the online ad on the Really Useful Group’s website. At the bottom was an email address for someone called Jo Hawes, the Children’s Administrator – whatever that meant. So, just after 11 p.m., having nothing better to do, I emailed her:

  Hi there

  Am planning on bringing my 6-year-old daughter along on Thursday – it will be a first audition for both of us.

  Please would you let me know

  a) will the children sing accompanied or unaccompanied – does it matter what key she sings in? and – you may not be able to advise on this!!!

  b) the time you expect people to start queuing on Thursday morning

  Thanks very much

  Probably won’t reply, I thought, but worth a go.

  Fifteen minutes later she replied.

  She will be accompanied and the key may vary. She should just know the tune.

  All I can tell you is that every single child will be seen but not necessarily on Thursday. It will depend where you are in the queue but on an open audition it is impossible to say how long the queue will be or what time it will start building up. Experience tells me they will start queuing at 6 or before and I am expecting 1000+ children.

  Further info attached.

  No way was I going to get up that early.

  Thanks so much for getting back to me so rapidly and for the extra information!

  A bit cheeky to ask this, but if we’re not going to be superhumanly keen and start queuing at daybreak, is 9 a.m. the cutoff point, or might it be more sensible to turn up a little later, knowing that she might not be seen for a day or so?

  It was, Jo replied immediately, entirely up to me.

  On Thursday, 6 April 2006 we left home at a very civilised 8.30 a.m., arriving in front of the London Palladium about an hour later. The multipley-braided, be-ribboned and even, in places, dirndled queue snaked around the theatre and off into the distance. Girls outnumbered boys massively, and the majority looked between nine and thirteen years old: there weren’t so many, it seemed, of Dora’s size and age. A couple of crews were filming groups of over-excited children, who were thrilled that they might be on telly. A few adults – those who had phoned in sick to bring their kids along – were hiding under their coats, worried that they might be on telly. Meanwhile, a smiley man with grey hair was joking with the children and brandishing a measuring stick to check that they didn’t exceed the five-foot height limit. It took us at least five minutes to reach the end of the queue.

  A thousand hopefuls were waiting (although the media reported that there were three thousand), the keenest, I later discovered, having shown up before five that morning. There was, obviously, no chance that Dora would be seen that day, and about twenty minutes after we arrived, I was handed a form to complete with name, address, height and weight details, and told that I would be contacted with the venue, date and time of her audition. Despite her insistence at having her growth regularly marked in biro on the kitchen doorpost, I didn’t have a clue how tall or heavy she was. Unless I’m baking a cake – a rare occurrence – I don’t do measuring. This has led to some entertaining (for me) situations involving doorways, sofas, badly scratched paintwork and cross men. Feeling slightly smug at having avoided the mind-numbingly dull queuing bit, I tracked down the nice man with the stick to determine Dora’s height and took a random guess at her weight.

  Five days later when we hadn’t heard anything, I emailed Jo just to make sure the form hadn’t gone AWOL. There was, she replied, a letter in the post, and auditions would be the following Wednesday. That would be the first day of the summer term. Dora attends one of the local state schools, headed by the formidable but twinkly Mrs Kendall. It’s a great school, happily diverse, within which the children are encouraged – pushed even – to work hard and to have high aspirations. The uniform is purple, popular with the girls (and may partly explain why, in Dora’s class, they outnumber the boys two to one). Mrs Kendall strongly disapproves of children missing school for any reason not involving a communicable disease, so I had to summon all my courage to phone the office and seek permission for Dora to skive off for her audition. Permission was granted much more readily than I expected. Surprisingly, Mrs Kendall actually seemed excited at the prospect.

  We arrived at the Urdang Academy in Covent Garden half an hour before our appointed time, climbed several flights of stairs and, after a quick loo visit, edged our way into a hot, stuffy studio-type room with scuffed wooden floors. It was buzzing with excited children and anxious parents and the few token chairs were all occupied. Because I wasn’t sure what she’d be asked to do (also I have zero dress sense and my hairdressing talents don’t stretch to straight central partings), Dora was wearing trainers, tracky pants and t-shirt, a broad grin and lopsided bunchies. I’d avoided twee, partly for reasons of taste, but mostly because it tends to involve pleats and plaits: both are beyond me. I gave Dora’s name to a woman leaning over a trestle table, managing a clipboard, a marker pen and a long strip of white stickers. She was obviously in charge, so I also handed over the small passport-sized photo we’d been instructed to provide (child’s name on the reverse), which featured Dora in her school uniform, another broad grin and more lopsided bunchies. ‘Aaaw,’ said the woman, looking at the photo and running her finger down the list on her clipboard. Halfway down page three of many, she put a tick by Dora’s name, wrote ‘Dora Gee’ on a sticker which she gave me to stick on Dora’s chest, shuffled through a pile of yellow paper to find the form I’d filled out at the Palladium, and fixed the photo to it. The auditions were running late, but after a lifetime of hanging around in doctors’ waiting rooms (mostly, but not entirely, due to low-level hypochondria), I’d expected this and brought along colouring book, pencils and something to read.

  The woman shushed everyone and called out a long list of names. About twenty assorted children bounced into a raggedy line, and were led out of the room. A couple of minutes later the previous group surged back in, three or four triumphantly waving letters, most shrugging and a couple in tears because they hadn’t got through. It was, I thought, a bit brutal to tell them then and there. But maybe better to know straight away: no restless waiting, you could start picking up the pieces immediately. ‘You won’t mind if you don’t get through, will you?’ I asked Dora, anxious that she might be returned to me sobbing her heart out, permanently scarred by the rejection. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s my first audition. I know I won’t get a part. I just want to try.’

  Perhaps drumming into her that she’d be highly unlikely to succeed at her first audition was a mistake. First implied that there might be other opportunities to try out for other shows. That having taken her to one audition, muggins here would schlep her along to another, then another and another, cheerfully abandoning work, wedding planning and, eventually, own life in the cause of supporting the aspiring starlet and tending to its every need.

  Had taking Dora to her ‘first’ audition inadvertently committed us to a life of kiddie showbiz? Would it turn me into a pushy mum, desperate for the reflected glory blazing off my spoiled child and pathologically and mistakenly convinced that she was better at everything than anyone else? Could today be the first small step on a downward spiral that would see me lying, cheating and demanding special treatment for her, telling directors how to do their job, and competing with other stage mothers, putting them and their children down whilst promoting my own flesh and blood. Would I – like Rose Hovic
k, immortalised in the musical Gypsy, who slathered her child-star daughter June in make-up and pushed her out on to the stage even when she had chicken pox, mumps and measles (although, to be fair, she did let her stay in bed with German measles) – fetch up putting my own, vicarious, ambition over Dora’s welfare? Would I turn into … (dun dun dun) – STAGE MOTHER?????

  As the group who’d just finished their audition left with their parents, we managed to snag a couple of vacated seats. I handed Dora her colouring book and pencils. But she soon found something more interesting to do. We’d been joined by a pretty little girl with long, straight, well-behaved dark hair, deep, sassy blue eyes and a cute grin. Inordinately self-possessed, she was accompanied by both parents and dressed as impeccably as her perfectly turned-out mother. Sitting down, she took her white Nintendo DS Lite out of her impossibly fluffy bag. Dora went shyly over to say hello and to watch her playing, and the girl made space for Dora to join her, while her parents and I made stilted, polite conversation. They had come up from Southend, and it was Adrianna’s first proper audition too, but she was already the star of her dance and drama schools, and had performed in local productions of South Pacific and The King and I. Although much smaller and slighter than Dora, she was a year older. Dora, I figured, stood no chance against this competition. She’s about average height for her age, and I remembered from my sister’s childhood acting days that small kids are usually preferred because it’s easier to work with an older child who can pass for younger than a younger one who isn’t yet mature enough to take direction.

  The girls’ names were called, and they disappeared out of the room in a cloud of children. Adrianna’s parents and I looked at each other nervously and made more polite, stilted conversation, without actually listening to anything the other said. A few minutes after the girls had been shepherded off, we parents ran out of conversation. I opened my book, read the same paragraph several times and worried about Dora being upset if – as was more than likely – she didn’t get through. I wondered whether she might actually have a chance. I smiled at Adrianna’s mum and read the same paragraph again. I worried about whether Dora was enjoying herself. What were they all doing in there? Singing? Solo? Together? Sometimes, apparently, auditions can be good, clean, melodic fun. Participating children have been known to form lasting friendships. They go in, sing, do some fun drama games and burst out bubbly and excited, while their parents chat warily and size up the opposition. But often kids are told whether they’ve got through not at the end of their slot, like today, or a few days or even weeks later, but part way through their audition. On those occasions, it’s usual for more than one or two to come out crying.